Liber amoris, or, The new Pygmalion

LIBER AMORIS

Or the New Pygmalion

BY

WILLIAM HAZLITT

With an Introduction by
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

LOMDON .

ELKIN MATHEWS <Sr* JOHN LANE

AT THE SIGN OF THE BODLEY HEAD

IN VIGO STREET

THE RIGHT OF EDITORIAL DEDICATION
HAS RECENTLY BEEN CALLED IN QUESTION.
ALL THE SAME, IT HAS MUCH SUPPORT OF
NOTABLE EXAMPLE, ANCIENT AND MODERN ;
AND, THEREFORE, AFTER THE FIRST OFFER-
ING OF THIS NEW EDITION OF THE "LIBER
AMORIS" TO THE HONOURED SHADE OF
HIM WHO MADE IT, I DESIRE TO ASSOCIATE
MY UNIMPORTANT SHARE IN ITS ISSUE
WITH THE NAME OF LORD DE TABLEY, IN
RESPECTFUL ADMIRATION OF HIS FINE
GIFTS AS A POET, AND EMBOLDENED BY A
FELLOWSHIP OF REGARD FOR THE GENIUS
OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.

R. LE G.

MAY 10, 1893.

871766

INTRODUCTION.

If the reading of the "Liber Amoris" is not
exactly a disappointment, at least it gives
-one a different kind of pleasure from that
which we very probably expected. One
looked, may be, for a beautiful garden of
fancy, but soon found that the appeal was not
so much to one's sense of beauty, as to one's
curiosity, one's sense of humour, one's pity,
sometimes even one's contempt. A few fine
sentences are to be met with, but singularly
few, and it is in fact not as literature, but
as a document, V" a document in madness,"
that the book has its value. Even had it
not been written by Hazlitt it would have
possessed this value, but in relation to him
it becomes doubly interesting : for, at first
sight, it seems that no aberration could have

11. INTRODUCTION.

been less characteristic of his morose and
unsympathetic nature. De Quincey tells us
that the book greatly raised Hazlitt in his
opinion, for this very reason " by shewing
him to be capable of stronger and more
agitating passions than " he " believed to be
within the range of his nature/' All the
same, though erotic passion may have
seemed foreign to Hazlitt, he had passions
vehement enough in other directions. The
vehemence of his political passions was
notorious, his letter to Gifford was as fine
a burst of anger as can be imagined, and
he had a gift for misunderstanding his
friends, of taking petty slights, which was
continually hurrying him into ungovernable
rage.

He seems to have been incapable, in his
daily life, of taking broad views, and he
was as irritably alive to every little " insult,"
or semblance of it, as the most ignorant
young miss. When he imagined such, even
in the case of friends of proved loyalty,
he never stopped to think, never allowed
any sense of affection or gratitude to suggest

INTRODUCTION. ill.

that he might be mistaken, but flew at once
into absurd passion, and proceeded, if pos-
sible, to pillory the offender in his next
essay. Mr. P. G. Patmore, in " My Friends
and Acquaintance," gives several examples
of this curious failing. You had only to <
accidentally pass him in the street, without
having seen him, and he would at once
decide that you had cut him, and go about
seeking your scalp.

The persistent attacks upon him in Black-
wood's Magazine, low and personal to a degree
hardly realisable in our day, when we have
seldom the excitement of a really spirited set-
to among men of letters, and " knuckle-
dusters" are forbidden, doubtless, aggravated
this irritable self-consciousness. He could
never forget that he was " pimpled Hazlitt,"
and the epithet made him skulk through the
streets like a criminal, and made him especi-
ally sensitive in the presence of women, who,
he felt sure, were always saying it over to
. themselves. It is impossible without a long
quotation from Mr. Patmore, to give the
reader any idea of the painful extremes of

IV. INTRODUCTION.

feeling to which this morbid sensitiveness
subjected him.

For instance, during the first week or fortnight
after the appearance of (let us suppose) one of
Blackwood's articles about him, if he entered a
coffee-house where he was known, to get his dinner,
it was impossible (he thought) that the waiters could
be doing anything else all the time he was there, but
pointing him out to guests as "the gentleman who was
so abused last mouth in Blackwood's Magazine".'
If he knocked at the door of a friend, the look and
reply of the servant (whatever they might be), made it
evident to him that he had been reading Black-
wood's Magazine before the family were up in the
morning ! If he had occasion to call at any of the
publishers for whom he might be writing at the time,
the case was still worse, inasmuch as there his bread
was at stake, as well as that personal civility, which he
valued no less. Mr. Colburn would be " not within,"
as a matter of course ; for his clerks to even ascertain
his pleasure on that point beforehand would be wholly
superfluous : had they not all chuckled over the
article at their tea the evening before ? Even the
instinct of the shop-boys would catch the cue from
the significant looks of those above them, and refuse
to take his name to Mr. Oilier. They would "be-
lieve he was gone to dinner." He could not, they
thought, want to have anything to say to a person
who, as it were, went about with a sheet of Black-

INTRODUCTION. V.

wood's pinned to his coat-tail like a dish-clout !

Then at home at his lodgings, if the servant who
waited upon him did not answer his bell the first
time Ah ! 'twas clear She had read Black-
wood's, or heard talk of it at the bar of the public-
house when she went for the beer ! Did the landlady
send up his bill a clay earlier than usual, or ask for
payment of it less civilly than was her custom how
could he wonder at it ? It was Blackwood*s
doing. But if she gave him notice to quit (on the
score, perhaps, of his inordinately late hours) he was
a lost man ! for would anybody take him in after
having read Black-wood's ? Even the strangers
that he met in the streets seemed to look at him
askance, "with jealous leer malignant," as if they
knew him by intuition for a man en whom was set
the double seal of public and private infamy ; the
doomed and denounced of Blackwood's Magazine.
x"
An inherent lack of humour was pro-

fly the spring- of Hazlitt's defectsj Mr.
Patmore says too that " an ingrained sel-
fishness, more or less influenced or modified
all the other points of his nature,'* and
certainly the general complexion of Hazlitt's
life seems at least to have been that of
gloomy self-absorption. However, it will
be fair here to recall Barry Cornwall's more

VI. INTRODUCTION.

complete and certainly more generous view
of his character :

Hazlitt himself had strong passions, and a few
prejudices ; and his free manifestations of these were
adduced as an excuse for the slander and animosity
\vith which he was perpetually assailed. He attacked
others, indeed (a few only), and of these he expressed
his dislike in terms sometimes too violent perhaps,
and at no time to be mistaken. Yet, when an
opportunity arose to require from him an unbiassed
opinion, he was always just. He did not carry
poisoned arrows into civil conflict. Subject to the
faults arising out of this, his warm temperament, he
possessed qualities worthy of affection and respect.
He was a simple, unselfish man, void of all deception
and pretence ; and he had a clear, acute intellect,
when not traversed by some temporary passion or
confused by a strong prejudice. . . .Like many others,
he was sometimes swayed by his affections. He loved
the first Napoleon beyond the bounds of reason. He
loved the worker better than the idler. He hated
pretensions supported merely by rank or wealth or
repute, or by the clamour of factions. And he felt
love and hatred in an intense degree. But he was
never dishonest. He never struck down the weak,
nor trod on the prostrate. He was never treacherous,
never tyrannical, never cruel

My first meeting with Mr. Hazlitt took place at the

INTRODUCTION. Vll.

house of Leigh Hunt, where I met him at supper.
I expected to see a severe, defiant-looking being. I met
a grave man, diffident, almost awkward in manner,
whose appearance did not impress me with much
respect. He had a quick, restless eye, however,
which opened eagerly when any good or bright obser-
vation was made ; and I found at the conclusion of
the evening, that when any question arose, the most
sensible reply always came from him. Although the
process was not too obvious, he always seemed to
have reasoned with himself before he uttered a
sentence.

There is no doubt that his strong passions and
determined likings often interfered with his better
reason. His admiration of Napoleon would not allow
of any qualification.

And then Barry Cornwall refers to the
frenzy which was the raison d'etre of the
following pages, a reference which will be
of interest to us later on.

The following sonnet by Sheridan Knowles
printed, a propos of Bewick's chalk drawing
of Hazlitt, reproduced in front of his son's
edition of his " Literary Remains," is of
value as the testimony of a man who.
knew him intimately, and was, indeed, with
Patmore, the sharer of his confidences in

Vll 1. INTRODUCTION.

regard to that divine impossible she, Sarah
Walker :

Thus Hazlitt looked ! There's life in every line !

Soul language fire that colour could not give,
See ! on that brow how pale-robed thought divine,

In an embodied radiance seems to live !
Ah ! in the gaze of that entranced eye,

Humid, yet burning, there beams passion's flame,

Lighting the cheek, and quivering through the

frame ;
While round the lips, the odour of a sigh

Yet hovers fondly, and its shadow sits
Beneath the channel of the glowing thought

And fire-clothed eloquence, which comes in fits
Like Pythiac inspiration ! Bewick taught

By thee, in vain doth slander's venom'd dart

Do its foul work 'gainst him. This head must own
a heart.

Hazlitt's face in this portrait wears certainly
a sensibility of expression, almost amounting
to voluptuousness, such as appears but little
if at all in his portrait by his brother. Be-
wick thus helps us the better to understand
the " Liber Amoris."

We have seen that Hazlitt was in other
directions a man of strong passions, an.d

INTRODUCTION. IX.

the man who is passionate in one thing
may be passionate in any when the spark
falls. But, actually, Hazlitt had always been
susceptible to woman. Patmore, giving an
account of his curious daily habits, tells
us how, rising at one or two, he would sit
over his breakfast of black tea and toast
(his slavery to black tea had, doubtless^
much to do with his misanthropy) " silent,
motionless, and self-absorbed,'* till the
evening, oppressed by a vis inertia, which
he was incapable of resisting, unless at the
prospect of absolute destitution (for he never
wrote till necessity actually forced it upon
him) or "moved to do so by some induce-
ment in which female attraction had a
chief share." Patmore also makes a
mysterious reference to a walk home one
evening with Hazlitt, during which, in the
" broad part of Parliament Street, opposite
to the Admiralty and the Horse Guards/'
Hazlitt was addressed by "sundry petition-
ers,"^//^ dejoie in fact, apparently acquainted
with him, and whose acquaintance he did
not affect to disown.

X. INTRODUCTION.

Again, in writing of the evenings spent
at the Southampton Coffee-house, Patmore,
dwelling on Barry Cornwall's share in them,
says :

And, above all other themes, to P[rocte]r, and to
him alone (except myself) Hazlitt could venture to
relate, in all their endless details those " affairs of the
heart " in one of which his head was always engaged,
and which happily always (with one fatal exception)
evaporated in that interminable talk about them of
which he was so strangely fond.

Not that Hazlitt confined his confidences on this
head to P[rocte]r and myself. On the contrary, he
extended them to almost every individual with whom
he had occasion to speak, if he could, by hook or
crook, find or make the occasion of bringing in the
topic. But, in general, he did this from a sort of
physical incapacity to avoid the favourite yet dreaded
theme of his thoughts ; and he did it with a perfect
knowledge that his confidential communications were
a bore to nine-tenths of those who listened to them,
and consequently that the pleasure of the communi-
cation was anything but mutual. . . .The truth is that
Hazlitt was a child in this matter ; yet at the same
time he was a metaphysician, a philosopher, and a
poet ; and hence the (in my mind) curious and unique
interest which attached to his mingled details and
dissertations on this the most favourite of all his

INTRODUCTION. XI.

themes of converse, at least in a tete a tete ; for he
rarely, if ever, brought up the subject under any other
circumstances.

But long before the days of " The South-
ampton," Hazlitt appears to have had an
experience no less violent in its excess than
that "one fatal exception," which is, of
course, that celebrated in the present volume.
He was then, however, more of an age for
such experience, being, apparently, about
twenty. The affair happened up at the
lakes, during a visit to Wordsworth, whose
friendship, as also Southey's, and perhaps
Coleridge's too, it cost him. Patmore gives
the most significant account of it, and I
cannot do better than quote him once
more :

I allude, he says, to a story relating to Hazlitt's
alleged treatment of some petty village jilt, who,
when he was on a visit to Wordsworth, had led him
(Hazlitt) to believe that she was not insensible to his
attractions; and then, having induced him to "com-
mit " himself to her in some ridiculous manner,
turned round upon him, and made him the laughing-
stock of the village. There is, I believe, too much
truth in the statement of his enemies, that the

XU. INTRODUCTION.

mingled disappointment and rage of Hnzlitt on this
occasion led him, during the madness of the moment
(for it must have been nothing less), to acts which
nothing but the supposition of insanity could account
for, much less excuse, And his conduct on this
occasion is. understood to have been the immediate
cause of that breach between him and his friends
above-named (at least Wordsworth and Southey),
which was never afterwards healed,

Here we catch a glimpse of that daemonic
frenzy which later on seems, and no wonder,
to have agitated even the phlegmatic nerves
of Sarah Walker. Lamb makes a waggish
allusion to the incident in a letter to Words-
worth during 1814, from which we gather
that Hazlitt narrowly missed a ducking
in the horse-pond for his eccentricities.
Wordsworth had evidently been writing
Lamb on the subject.

The " scapes " of the great god Pan, who appeared
among your mountains some dozen years since, and
his narrow chance of being submerged by the swains,
afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the
water-nymphs pulling for him. He would have
been another Hylas W. Hylas. In a mad letter
which Capel Lofft wrote to M\onthly\ M[agazine] t
Philips (now Sir Richard), I remember his noticing

INTRODUCTION. Xlll.

a metaphysical article of Pan, signed H., and adding
" I take your correspondent to be tbe same with
Hylas." Hylas had put forth a pastoral just before.
How near the unfounded conjecture of the certainly
inspired Lofft (unfounded as \ve thought) was to
being realised ! I can conceive him being "good
to all that wonder in that perilous flood !"

De Quincey used to hint also that Hazlitt
was attached to Miss Wordsworth, the poet's
sister, Dorothy, but Mr. W. C. Hazlitt thinks
that very little stress must be laid on the
conjecture.

The next authentic name in the legend of
Hazlitt's loves is that of Miss Railton, of
Liverpool. Her father was a friend of
Ilazlitt's father, and when William went
touring as a roving portrait painter through
the provinces, he gave him one or two com-
missions. It was not William, however, but
his brother John, the miniature-painter, who
has preserved for us the "very dark danger-
ous eyes " of Miss Railton. She was about
twenty-five when Hazlitt first met her
about his own age and he seems to have
been very much in love. But a match with
a struggling artist did not commend itself

XIV. INTRODUCTION.

to the parents of the lady, and so the affair
came to nothing.

Another name, presented to us merely by
a bantering allusion of his wife, was "Sally
Shepherd." Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that
Mrs. Hazlitt would " tax him from time to
time with having had a sweetness once for
Sally Shepherd," and that the only conjecture
as to the owner of this pretty name is that
she was perhaps the daughter of Dr. Shep-
herd of Gateacre, whose portrait he painted
in 1803.

Still another lady seems to have swayed
the ardent soul of William Hazlitt : Miss
Windham, only daughter of the Hon. Charles
Windham, of Norman Court, near Salisbury.
She is described as having been very hand-
some, though pitted with smallpox, and we
are told that a lady once remarking to Haz-
litt what a terrible disfigurement smallpox
was, he had replied that the most beautiful
woman he ever knew was so marked, and,
lowering his voice, he mentioned the name
of Miss Windham. Miss Windham, how-
ever, married otherwhere, and, curiously

INTRODUCTION. XV.

enough, when Hazlitt came to live at Winter-
slow, in their near neighbourhood, her
husband offered him the free use of apart-
ments in Norman Court an offer such
as Hazlitt's (somewhat small) pride could,
under no circumstances, have entertained.
In one of his essays he has a pathetic
apostrophe beginning: "Ye woods, that
crown the clear low brow of Norman Court,"
in which he speaks of " that face, pale as
the primrose, with hyacinthine locks, for
ever shunning and for ever haunting me. ."
However, Hazlitt's fate, as the gipsies
say, seemed to lie about Winterslow. A
certain Dr. Stoddart and his sister Sarah
lived in retirement on a small property there.
Dr. Stoddart was a friend of John Hazlitt's,
and he and Miss Stoddart were also friends
of the Lambs. William would thus naturally
become acquainted with Sarah, though we
have no record of his first introduction to
her. Mary Lamb and Sarah Stoddart seem
indeed to have been quite intimate friends,
and it is only through Mary's letters to Sarah
that we catch any glimpses of the develop-

XVI. INTRODUCTION.

ment of relations between Sarah and William.
Indeed, one cannot quite absolve Mary from
indulgence in that alluring game of match-
making. Could it have been of the gentle
Mary that Hazlitt was thinking when in his
" Advice to a Schoolboy," he bids his son
beware, in the choice of a wife, of meddle-
some friends ?

We gather from a letter of hers, dated
2ist September, 1803, that Sarah was then
engaged to another, but that she was of
two minds whether or not to jilt him for
William. Mary begins by advising her " to
drop all correspondence with William,"
but ends in this strain : " God bless you,
and grant you may preserve your integrity,
and remain unmarried and penniless, and
make William a good and happy wife."
Early in 1804, we find the good Mary slyly
hinting at the subject again : " Rickman
wants to know if you are going to be
married yet. Satisfy him in that little par-
ticular when you write."

I should say that towards the end of 1803
Dr. Stoddart had, as a professional specu-

fcKMJBM.

^

INTRODUCTION. XV11.

lation, settled, with his sister, in Malta, at
the time Coleridge made his ill-fated ex-
pedition there. In thanking Sarah for news
of Coleridge's safe arrival, Mary cannot
resist further allusions to what would really
seem to have been a pet project with her.
Dr. Stoddart's venture apparently had not
been successful. " I cannot condole with
you very sincerely/* writes Mary, "upon
your little failure in the fortune - making
way. If you regret it, so do I. But I hope
to see you a comfortable English wife, and
the forsaken, forgotten William, of English
partridge memory, I have still a hankering

after I trust you will at last find some

man who has sense enough to know you are
well worth risking a probable life of poverty
for. I shall yet live to see you a poor, but
happy English wife." The allusion to
partridges is an extinct joke to-day, but it
had evidently tickled Mary, for in September
1805 it was still alive. " Has the partridge
season opened any communication between
you and William ?" wrote Mary. "As I allow
you to be imprudent till I see you, I shall

XV111. INTRODUCTION.

expect to hear you have invited him to taste
his own birds. Have you scratched him out
of your will yet ? "

A month or two later we read : " I .want
to know if you have seen William, and if
there is any prospect in future there. All
you said in your letter from Portsmouth that
related to him was burnt so in the fumiga-
ting" [for disinfecting purposes] "that we
could only make out that it was unfavour-
able, but not the particulars. Tell us again
how you go on, and if you have seen him.
I conceit affairs will somehow he made up
between you at last."

Space forbids that we follow Miss Stoddart
through all the ups and downs of her variable
affections. Her vacillations continued for
another three years, a Mr. \yhite and a Mr.
Dowling being added to the game, or ever
the tale was told. However, in the long run
Mary Lamb was to have her wish, though,
like many who have contributed to an event,
she seems to have grown a little anxious as
it really approached. Toward the end of
1807 she writes: "Farewell! Determine

INTRODUCTION. XIX.

as wisely as you can in regard to Hazlitt ;
and if your determination is to have him,
heaven send you many happy years together,
... .if I were sure you would not be quite
starved to death, nor beaten to a mummy^
I should like to see Hazlitt and you come
together, if (as Charles observes) it were
only for the joke sake."

The joke came off on the ist of May,
1808, at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn.
The Lambs were at the marriage, and,
writing to Southey seven years after, Lamb
thus alludes to it : " I was at Hazlitt's
marriage, and had like to have been turned
out several times during the ceremony.
Anything awful makes me laugh."

The first and only fruits of their union
was the birth on the 26 September, 1811, of
their son William, who was soon to be the
only bond between them.

It was necessary thus to sketch the story
of Hazlitt's heart prior to his meeting the
heroine of Liber Amoris because of the light
it throws upon his temperament, and also
upon his relations with his wife.

XX. INTRODUCTION.

We have seen that Miss Stoddart did not
accept him before she had flirted consider-
ably with others, and one is bound to feel
in reading Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's " Memoirs,"
that these flirtations were not the attractions
of an ardent temperament, but merely the
experiments of a worldly one. She seems
to have been a woman of amiable enough
disposition and even exceptionally cultured
though she does not seem to have
sympathised with her husband's work but
utterly matter-of-fact and devoid of poetic
sensibility. She hadn't a half-pennyworth
of romantic love in her. An extra thousand
a year, apparently, would have moved her
heart beyond the most heroic devotion ; and
we can but conclude that she accepted
Hazlitt as a forlorn hope. , Yet she was a
good wife, so far as wifely duty goes, and
especially a good mother. The rift between
them was in the absolute lack of tempera-
mental sympathy. So far as one can make
out she was a better wife than Hazlitt was a
husband ; for Hazlitt must have been very
difficult to live with, and though of actual

INTRODUCTION. XXI.

inconstancy we have no hint, it was against
his nature to remain long constant to one
affection.

In his edition of his father's literary re-
mains, young William Hazlitt speaks of the
failure of mutual happiness between his
father and mother, " owing in great measure
to an imagined and most unfounded idea,
on my father's part, of a want of sympathy
on that of my mother."

Whosever the fault mostly was, the fact
remains that Hazlitt and his wife were an
uncomfortable pair, and before the autumn of
1819 we find them living apart.

And here we at last arrive at the print-
dress divinity celebrated in the following
pages.

In letter IV. one reads of "the time I
first saw the sweet apparition, August 16,
1820." The "sweet apparition" was Sarah
Walker, daughter of a Mr. Walker, tailor and
lodging-house keeper at No. 9, Southamp-
ton Buildings, Chancery Lane, where Hazlitt
had come to take up his solitary abode.
The superstitious reader may notice that the

XX11. INTRODUCTION.

name Sarah seems to have been of sinister
significance to Hazlitt' s fate : Sarah Shep-
herd, Sarah Stoddart, and now Sarah Walker.
Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that Mr. Walker had
two daughters, but surely he had three, for
in "The Quarrel" (p. 18), arising out of
Sarah's little sister Betsey playing eaves-
dropper to the embraces of the fond lovers,
Sarah speaks of an eldest sister, and implies

her marriage to "Mr. M ." De Quincey,

too, says that " her sister had married very
much above her rank." Obviously he could
not have been referring to little Betsey, but

to the wife of " Mr. M ." Mr. W. C.

Hazlitt says that Betsey Walker afterwards
married a gentleman named Roscoe, whom,

however, he identifies with " Mr. M. ."

In 1822 Hazlitt writes to his friend (Letter

XII. p. 99) asking him "to call on M

in confidence." In the original MS. of this
in "Memoirs" the blank reads "to call on
Roscoe in confidence," and Mr. W. C. Haz-
litt remarks in a foot-note : " the gentleman
who had married the sister, and was said to
be very happy in his choice " the " sister "

INTRODUCTION. XX111.

being apparently Betsey, who, according to
the Liber Amoris, was still a little girl !
Evidently there is some confusion here,
which can only be explained by Sarah having
two sisters, or on the supposition that Haz-
litt invented the Flibbertigget little sister for
dramatic purposes. But that seems very im-
probable, and quite out of keeping with the
general treatment of his confession, which
is all through marked with a quite sordid
adherence to fact. Besides , the petty humili-
ation of the child's running out of hiding,
and saying " He thought I did not see him !"
is too lifelike for invention. It makes one
blush with pity for the poor nympholepht,
reduced by his passion to such degrading
familiarities.

For descriptions of Sarah Walker, pro-
bably the most absurdly idealised of all
literary goddesses which is saying much
we are not entirely dependent on Hazlitt's
raptures. Barry Cornwall describes her with
some care, and I cannot do better than quote
the whole passage, as it gives the completest
and most circumstantial account of Hazlitt's

XXIV. INTRODUCTION.

frenzy left by his contemporaries :

His intellect was completely subdued by an insane
passion. He was, for a time, unable to think or talk
of anything else. He abandoned criticism and books
as idle matters, and fatigued every person whom he
met by expressions of her love, of her deceit, and of
his own vehement disappointment. This was when
he lived in Southampton Buildings, Holborn. Upon
one occasion I know that he told the story of his
attachment to five different persons in the same day.
And at each time entered into minute details of his
love-story. " I am a cursed fool," said he to me. "I

saw I going into Wills' Coffee-house yesterday

morning ; he spoke to me. I followed him into the
house, and whilst he lunched I told him the whole
story. Then I wandered into the Regent's Park,

where I met one of M 's sons. I walked with

him some time, and on his using some civil expressions,
by Jove, Sir, I told him the whole story ! " [Here
he mentioned another instance which I forget.]
" Well, sir " (he went on), " I then went and called
on Hayden, but he was out. There was only his man,
Salmon, there ; but by Jove ! I could not help myself.
It all came out ; the whole cursed story. Afterwards
I went to look at some lodgings at Pimlico. The
landlady at one place, after some explanations as to
rent, &c., said to me very kindly, "I am afraid you
are not well Sir?" " No, Ma'am," said I, "lam
not well ; " and on enquiring further, the devil take

INTRODUCTION. XXV.

me if I did not let out the whole story from beginning
to end." I used to see this girl, Sarah Walker, at
his lodgings, and could not account for the extravagant
passion of her admirer. She was the daughter of the
lodging-house-keeper. Her face was round and small,
and her eyes were motionless, glassy, and without
any speculation (apparently) in them. Her move-
ments in walking were very remarkable, for I never
observed her to make a step. She went onwards in
a sort of wavy, sinuous manner, like the movements
of a snake. She was silent, or uttered monosyllables
only, and was very demure. Her steady, unmoving
gaze upon the person whom she was addressing was ex-
ceedingly unpleasant. The Germans would have ex-
tracted a romance from her, enduing her perhaps with
some diabolic attribute. To this girl he gave all his
valuable time, all his wealth of thought, and all the
loving frenzy of his heart. For a time I think that
on this point he was substantially insane certainly
beyond self-control. To him she was a being full of
witching, full of grace, with all the capacity of
tenderness. The retiring coquetry, which had also
brought others to her, invested her in his sight with
the attractions of a divinity.

Making allowance for the fact that in
almost every passion,

"some hidden hand
Reveals to him that loveliness

Which others cannot understand,"

XXVI. INTRODUCTION.

it seems to me from this description,
written, one must not forget, in cold blood,
that Sarah Walker was physically by no
means unattractive. She was evidently a
sensuous creature, not unskilled in the arts
of the body. That sinuous movement, that
gliding walk, that general suggestion of
Melusine, may well have appealed to a man
so predisposed to erotomania as Hazlitt, and
before we dismiss Hazlitt's conception of
her charms as entirely hallucination De Quin-
cey does well to remind us that Hazlitt's
" eye had been long familiar with the beauty
(real and ideal) of the painters." De Quin-
cey also adds another touch to her portrait.
jHazlitt had confessed, he said, in conversa-
tion that one characteristic of her complexion
made somewhat against her charm, " that
she had a look of being somewhat jaded,
as if she were unwell, or the freshness of
the animal sensibilities gone by." May not
this have been the passion-pallor, so much
in evidence in aesthetic poetry another
mark of a strongly sexual nature. \

Whatever may have been the truth about

INTRODUCTION. XXV11.

her physical charms, Hazlitt certainly at-
tributed to her spiritual, moral and mental
qualities which she was far from possessing.
For us, who have no opportunity of appreci-
ating the glamour of her walk, and can only
judge her by her talk, she seems the very
type of a servant girl. Predisposed to im-
morality, yet she is full of petty convention-
ality, of sententious propriety, very nice of
her " honour," studiously sensitive of " in-
sult," "has no secrets from her mother," and
cannot be more to him than a friend, al-
lows no " liberties," and yet has no scruples
about sitting by the hour on lodgers' knees.
She is lumpish, unresponsive, full of ignorant
pride, and is, of course, no little pious.

Towards the end Hazlitt began to see her
more in this light. He calls her "little
yes and no," and even so early as Letter II.,
in a fit of pique, he is impious enough to
exclaim : "After all, what is there in her but
a pretty figure, and that you can't get a word
out of her ? " A momentary gleam of sane
criticism. On one occasion even a gleam
of humour breaks from his owlish absorption.

XXV111. INTRODUCTION.

" I have high ideas of the married state !"
says the sententious little hussey.

" Higher than of the maiden state ?" asks
Hazlitt slyly, irony which nearly lost him his
parting kiss.

If she was a tradesman's daughter, she
had as nice a sense of honour, &c. " Talk
of a tradesman's daughter," cries the en-
amoured essayist, with a confusion of pro-
nouns often observable in emotion of the
kind "you would ennoble any family, thou
glorious girl by true nobility of mind/'

Hazlitt had met Sarah Walker, August 1 6,

1820. Later in the same year, or early in

1821, the idea of a formal separation between
him and his wife seems first to have been
mentioned, but no steps seem to have been
taken till early in 1822, when we find Hazlitt
in Scotland. The original MS of the " Liber
Amoris," in the possession of Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt, is dated Stamford, January 29, 1822.
" I was detained at Stamford," he says in his
first letter, "and found myself dull, and could
hit upon no other way of employing my
time so agreeably." Hazlitt remained in

INTRODUCTION. XXIX.

Scotland, with the exception of a freakish
journey Londonwards (see Letter to J. S. K.)
till about July 18. Meanwhile he had lived
partly at Edinburgh, partly at Renton Inn
(the "Bees Inn" of the "Liber Amoris")
in Berwickshire. At Renton Inn he wrote
a whole volume of his ''Table Talk" (see
Letter X.). Mrs. Hazlitt landed at Leith on
April 21, and with her coming the arrange-
ments for divorce seem to have been acceler-
ated. On May 6, Hazlitt lectured at Glasgow
on Milton and Shakespeare, and on May 13
on Thomson and Burns. On June 17 Mrs.
Hazlitt went for a short tour in the High-
lands, returning to Edinburgh on June 28.
The divorce seems to have been settled on
July 17, as Hazlitt sailed for London on the
1 8th, and Mrs. Hazlitt on the igth of that
month.

It is unnecessary for me to dwell on the
details of the divorce, or of the time spent
in Edinburgh pending it, as (owing to the
kindness of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt), I have been
able to reprint the whole of the extracts
from Mrs. Hazlitt' s diary of the time, first

XXX. INTRODUCTION.

printed in "The Memoirs." This will enable
the reader to fill in for himself the back-
ground to certain allusions to Hazlitt's Edin-
burgh exile in the " Liber Amoris."

It is surely one of the most curious
documents in the history of " love." The
whole affair is seen to have been so purely
a matter of business with them. It certainly
throws a light on the incompatibility of
their union. Mrs. Hazlitt had, doubtless,
many good qualities, but this diary reveals
a coldness of temperament which, when we
remember Hazlitt's subterranean volcanoes,
goes far to explain their want of sympathy.
A little temper would have been a hopeful
sign. But, no ! they are each evidently
too pleased at the prospect of release for
that. So they talk pictures and take tea
together like old friends, and, one must add,
like sensible people. The only touch of
feeling is in reference to their child. What-
ever love they ever had for each other
centres in it.

One quaint incident of the affair, not
mentioned either in Mrs. Hazlitt's diary or

INTRODUCTION. XXXI.

" The Memoirs," is to be found in Forster's
" Life of Landor." The anecdote was related
in a letter from Seymour Kirkup to John
Forster. Hazlitt, on his second wedding
tour, paid a visit to Landor at the Palazzo
Medici, in the spring of 1825.

"As Hazlitt's present continental journey," wrote
Kirkup, " was in the nature of a holiday wedding-trip
with his second wife, whose small independence had
enabled him to give himself that unusual enjoyment,
he appears to have had no scruple in dilating to his
friends on those facilities of Scottish law which had
opened to him such advantages."

" He related to Landor, Brown and myself one day
the history of his own divorce. He told us that he
and his wife, having always some quarrel going on,
determined at last, from incompatibility of temper, to
get separated. So, to save Mrs. H.'s honour, and
have all their proceedings legal, they went to work in
this way. They took the steamboat to Leith, pro-
vided themselves each with good law advice, and
continued on the most friendly terms in Edinburgh
till everything was ready ; when Hazlitt described
himself calling in from the streets a not very respect-
able female confederate, and for form's sake, putting
her in his bed and lying down beside her. * Well,
sir,' said Hazlitt, turning more particularly to Landor,
who had by this time thrown out signs of the most

XXX11. INTRODUCTION.

lively interest, down I lay, and the folding-doors
opened, and in walked Mrs. H., accompanied by two
gentlemen. She turned to them and said : Gentle-
men, do you know who that person is in that bed
along with that woman ? Yes, madam, they politely
replied, 'tis Mr. William Hazlitt. On which, sir, she
made a courtesy, and they went out of the room, and
left me and my companion in statu quo. She and
her witnesses then accused me of adultery, sir, and
obtained a divorce against me, which, by gad, sir,
was a benefit to both.'*

We are told that Landor listened to this
story with " eager anxiety," and hailed its
conclusion with " irrepressible delight."
" On other points, too," adds Kirkup,
" Hazlitt and his host found themselves in
unaccustomed yet perfect sympathy; and so
heartily did each enjoy the other's wilfulness
and caprice, that a strong personal liking
characterised their brief acquaintance."

Does this odd story mean that these
business-like people had or had not a sense
of humour ? While these legalities were
trailing their slow length along, Hazlitt' s soul
was pouring out his fiery love for Sarah Walker
in the letters which chiefly compose the

INTRODUCTION. XXX111.

following pages. The majority of them were
written to Mr. P. G. Patmore, who is the
" C.P." of the series. Mr. Patmore published
a selection from the original versions in "My
Friends and Acquaintance^," and that I am
fortunately able to reprint here, so that the
reader may compare the two versions for
himself. He will remark that two or three
of the letters in the ** Liber Amoris " are
out of their proper order.

The two final letters to "J.S.K " were
written to James Sheridan Knowles, the
dramatist, who regarded Hazlitt with some-
thing like hero-worship. In a letter to Mr.
Patmore not included either in " My Friends
and Acquaintances," or the " Liber Amoris"
(see Appendix, p. Ixxxix.) and probably
written between June 3rd and 9th, Hazlitt

says " I am going to see K , to get him

to go with me to the Highlands, and talk
about her." A cheerful prospect for poor

Knowles ! However, " K " seems to

have proved himself a friend in a thousand,
and to have suffered his friend's maunderings
with an unexampled fortitude. The reader

XXXIV. INTRODUCTION.

will find references to their Highland walks
and talks on pages 121 125, pages too
in which one gains grateful glimpses of
the more robust Hazlitt, who wrote so finely
on walking tours. With the bracing in-
fluences of Highland scenery around him,
Sarah Walker was not quite without a rival,
and Hazlitt seems to have been not so
trying a companion after all.

This letter to "J.S.K." gives so literal a
version of the conclusion of Hazlitt's
passion that there is no necessity for me to
recapitulate it here. Suffice it that on his
return to London, he humiliated himself
before her to a still more ludicrous degree,
and on her still remaining a Galatea no
prayers could warm to life, gave way to
frenzies of passion that , very naturally
alarmed the whole Walker household. This
seems to have been the final flare-up of his
feelings, for on his suddenly discovering
that his old fellow lodger, had, as he sus-
pected, been her lover all the time, he gives
up the game as suddenly as he took it up,
and we leave him talking the calmest philo-

INTRODUCTION. XXXV.

sophy, with an eye that is already beginning
to suspect a humorous side to the whole
absurd drama. " Her image," he says,
"seems fast * going into the wastes of time'
like a weed that the wave bears farther and
farther from me."

How, after so much illumination, he came
to publish the story, how it was that his
friends did not combine to dissuade him,
seems hard to understand. He had already,
in an essay on " Great and little Things,"
published in the New Monthly Magazine
early in 1822 (and reprinted in " Table
Talk"), committed himself by a rhapso-
dical reference to his "Infelice" dragged
in head and shoulders. Mrs. Hazlitt refers
to the indiscretion in her diary for July
iyth. "I told him," she writes, "he had
done a most injudicious thing publishing
what he did in the Magazine about Sarah
Walker, particularly at this time, and that
he might be sure it would be made use
of against him, and that everybody in
London had thought it a most improper
thing, and Mr. John Hunt was quite sorry

XXXVI. INTRODUCTION.

that he had so committed himself." I have
quoted the passage in question in a note to
Mrs. Hazlitt's Journal, pp. Ixx. Ixxiv.

John Hunt's regret at the indiscretion
seems to have been short-lived, for it did
not prevent his publishing the still greater
indiscretion of the " Liber Amoris," within
a few months afterwards. Though Hunt
published it, Mr. C. H. Reynell was, for
;ioo, the purchaser of the copyright. Was
it that Hazlitt had one of his periodical
fits of impecuniosity on him, and could not
resist this opportunity of coining his heart
in guineas ? However it happened, a man
could hardly have done a more deliberately
stupid injury to his fame. He had thus
freely given his " Blackwood's" enemies an
opportunity for which they, had thirsted for
years, and for which they would have gladly
paid any price. And you may be sure they
did not miss the opportunity. He was no
longer to be "pimpled Hazlitt," but "the
new Pygmalion ! "

In the number for June, 1823, appeared
a long review in their most cut-throat style,

INTRODUCTION. XXXV11.

garnished with long quotations of the most
outspoken passages, which lost none of
their piquancy by the aid of copious capitals
and italics. As this seems a more than
usually interesting " cobweb of criticism,"
I venture to make a somewhat lengthy
extract.

After some preliminary banter, the re-
viewer thus settles down to his scalping in
real earnest :

"To be serious : we have long wished that some
of this precious brotherhood would embody in a plain
English narrative, concerning plain English trans-
actions, the ideas of their school concerning morality,
and the plain household relations of society. We
now have our wish ; and it is certainly not the less
desirably accomplished, because the work is not a
novel, but a history ; not a creation of mere Cockney
imagination^, but a 'veritable transcript of the feelings
and doings of an individual living LiBER^xA We
shall make a few extracts, and leave our readers to
form their opinion of this H ."

" The following fragments are extracted from the

correspondence of our romantic H , who, it will

be seen, is an active gentleman of the press, and
writes lustily at the rate of five pounds odd a sheet
(for the Liberal ? or the Examiner ?} in the midst of
his calamities."

XXXV111. INTRODUCTION.

The reviewer then proceeds to extract
some of those passages referring to what
Sarah Walker described as "liberties" not
forgetting to draw eloquent attention to the
reference to "Endymion" also the conver-
sation between Hazlitt and her father (see
pp. 137 142) which, somewhat incompre-
hensibly, winds him up to a perfect moral
fury :

" ' Would she have me, or would she not ? * HE

SAID HE COULD NOT TELL.

Reader, this scene passes between H and the

father of the young woman he wishes to make his
wife ! What delicacy ! what manliness ! what a veil
is here rent away ! what abomination is disclosed !
What, after this, is a COCKNEY and A LIBERAL ? * "

Then in his most impressive manner :

"Good public, since we first took pen in hand, nothing
so disgusting as this has ever fallen in our way. We
have gone through with it, because we conceived that
not to do so would be a most serious breach of public
duty in a journal which may trace five-sixths of all
the vulgar abuse that has been heaped upon its
character and conduct to this one single fact, that

IT HAS EXPOSED AND RUINED THE COCKNEY

SCHOOL. So long as examples were to be drawn

INTRODUCTION, XXXIX.

from Italianized poetasterisms, and unintelligible
essays, it might be that some should hesitate about
adopting all our conclusions. We now bid them
farewell : we now leave them for once and for ever in
the hands of every single individual, however humble
in station, however limited in knowledge and acquire-
ment, who has elevation enough to form the least
notion of what 'virtue,' 'honour' and 'manliness,'
and, we may add, 'love,' mean and penetration
enough to understand a plain English story told in
plain English.

This book is printed for the same JOHN HUNT
who is the publisher of the Liberal and the Examiner,
and the brother of Leigh Hunt, the author of
'Rimini,' and the 'Letters from Abroad.' The
elegant, polite, chivalrous, pure, high-spirited, five-
guinea-per-sheet gentleman of the press, who writes
this book, and tells this story, is a fair specimen of the
tribe of authors to which he belongs (at this moment
they are all busy in puffing him as a new Rousseau),
and he speaks in the course of his work elegantly,
kindly, and familiarly, of ' CRAIGCROOK, WHERE

LIVES THE FIRST OF CRITICS, AND THE KlNG OF

MEN.' So then it seems H is a friend of

Mr. Jeffrey's ! well, we wish Mr. H much joy

of the acquaintance but no we correct ourselves
Mr. Jeffrey could not then have known the story of

' Sally in our Alley ! ' and Mr. H will not

speedily nestle again at Craigcrook ! "

We leave ' H ' in the hands not of the ' First

Xl. INTRODUCTION.

of Critics and the King of Men,* but of the British
public ; and we call down upon his head, and upon
the heads of those accomplished reformers in ethics,
religion and politics, who are now enjoying his chef
d'ceuvre, the scorn and loathing of every thing that
bears the name of MAN. Woman ! But it would
be insult to go farther."

It will no doubt interest the reader to
know what " those accomplished reformers
in ethics, &c.," actually had to say of the
"Liber Amoris." The Blackwoodsman evi-
dently refers to a review which had appeared
in the Examiner of May nth. It is a sly
and witty piece of writing, and one still
smiles at the way in which the critic, while
assuming with much seriousness that the
author was dead, as stated in the advertise-
ment, keeps significantly referring to "the
unhappy person deceased in the Nether-
lands," " the gentleman who died in the
Netherlands " as with an " ahem ! " in the
voice. The reader, too, will notice the
clever application of the Berkeleyan theory :

"The lover, the poet, and another sort of person,
we are told by Shakespeare," begins * the Examiner *
reviewer :

INTRODUCTION. xli.

" ' Are of imagination all compact ; '

and if so, singly considered, what must be the state
of the case when two or more of them are united in
the same person ? In the common acceptation of
the term, we have no evidence to prove that the
St. Preux of this little book is a poet, but in its
higher and more enlarged sense he is clearly so ; and
admitting the two former characteristics to be self-
existent, and the last ' proceeding,' we have an
exemplification of the imaginative trio of Shakes-
peare in the single author of Liber Amoris. We are
not aware indeed of the publication of anything so
indicative of the Ideal theory of Bishop Berkeley,
since the publication of ' The Academical Questions *
of Sir William Drummond nothing so approaching
to a demonstration that mind is the great creator,
and matter a fable. ... Its essence consists in
the eloquence of soul and of passion which these
trite and by no means exalted events indicate. What-
ever Werter may be in the original garb of Goethe,
we have always thought him a somewhat spiritless
personage in his English dress ; but whether this be
so or no, the incident of that German production
is by no means of the first order. The St. Preux of
Rousseau is a very different creation, and with a
somewhat stronger breathing of physical ardour
V amour physique, as Gil Bias calls it the gentle-
man who died' in the Netherlands in some degree
resembles him. . . .

X. INTRODUCTION.

We regret exceedingly the death of the impassioned
author, because we are of opinion, from the close of
the book, that if he had lived for some time longer
he would have survived his passion. . . .

At all events, Liber Amoris ' is a novelty in the
English language, and we doubt not will be received
as a rara avis in this land of phlegm and sea-coal."

The modern reader will hardly take the
" Liber Amoris" as seriously as either of these
critics. It will not on the one hand seem so
dangerously immoral, or on the other so
finely artistic a piece of work here at the
end as it did there at the beginning of the
century. Perhaps that highly proper Black-
woodsman was not really quite so shocked as
he felt it necessary to appear. More recent
examples have proved that the sins of one's
political adversaries are as scarlet. Far from
taking so grave a view of Hazlitt's amour, we
are more likely to see in the very violence of
the aberration a witness to the essential
innocence of his nature at the time. It seems
to say that, despite those confidences with
Patmore and others at " The Southampton,"
Hazlitt's life had actually been freer from
taint than the lives of most men. Few men

INTRODUCTION. xliii.

of his years remain capable of taking any
woman so seriously, not to speak of a little
servant-girl. Possibly Sarah Walker's station
a serving-maid, "out of thy star " will
seem the least forgivable part of the affair to
certain natures, to whom the charm of print-
stuff, save in the authorised forms of blouse
or boating costume, has not been revealed.
Some will perhaps be able to forgive Hazlitt
all the easier on that account. Cophetua's
was a true story. For Hazlitt, the reader
must make sure not to forget, meant honour-
ably by his beggar-maid. It is a pity his
assurances of those honourable intentions
make such ludicrous reading. Indeed, the
one sin which we find in his book to-day
is the sin against humour. Though, as we
have said, the illusion did credit to Hazlitt's
heart, it is impossible not to feel that no
man of forty should be able to mistake a
woman for a goddess or an angel, and he
should certainly never quote Milton or any
good poet to her. It is unnatural, uncanny,
in the bearded man. Nai'vet6 is charming
up to twenty, but the naivete* of middle -age

Xliv. INTRODUCTION.

is unattractive, and the " Liber Amoris " is
full of that unattractive quality, much like
the naivete we sometimes find in the poetical
effusions of criminals.

To think of poor Hazlitt gravely lavishing
his choice Elizabethan quotations on the
hussey, not sparing even to lay at her feet
his sacred passion for Napoleon ! Was ever
in the history of amorous sentiment any-
thing more ludicrous than the tiresome
nonsense about " the little image " ! There
is indeed, as Hazlitt himself says, something
in it all " discordant to honest ears."

Viewed as literature, it is impossible to
agree with the reviewer in "The Examiner"
that "the gentleman who died in the Nether-
lands" is worthy to be mentioned in the
same day as Rousseau. Remembering Haz-
litt' s devotion to The New Helo'ise, it seems
strange that he should not have succeeded
better. The reader will remember how he
used to carry it in his pocket during his
walking-tours, and will recall especially that
passage where he tells us : " It was on the
loth of April, 1798, that I sat down to a

INTRODUCTION. xlv.

volume of the New Elo'ise, at the Inn at
Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold
chicken/' It is not inappropriate that we have
thus recalled that other robuster Hazlitt, who
in his other writings, so full of bracing man-
liness, seems so little related to the maudlin
sentimentalist of the book before us. Un-
likely as it seems, should any reader encounter
this book who has not previously made
Hazlitt's acquaintance, I must beg him
in justice to a fine writer to acquire his
other books at once. To those who know
the Hazlitt of the glorious essays " On
Going a Journey," "My First Acquaintance
with Poets," " On the Fear of Death," the
" Liber Amoris" may be entrusted without
fear. They will know where to place it, in
a very subsidiary relation indeed to the
Hazlitt beloved of Mr. Stevenson and all
honest men who love virile English. It is
but as a literary curiosity, a document of
nympholepsy, a biographical appendix, that
tffe "TLiber Amoris " has any value unless
one sees in the literal tone of its opening
conversations a naive promise of modern

Xlvi. INTRODUCTION.

realism, a prophecy of Mr. George Moore.
Properly speaking, it is necessary to the
understanding of Hazlitt's curious dis-
position. Many critics now-a-days advo-
cate doctored biography. In view of a
public which is far too inclined to magnify
all the warts of its great men, there is,
doubtless, something to be said for such
a theory. Truth of presentation, under
the most favourable circumstances, is so
hopeless a quest, that we might as well, per-
haps, frankly regard biography as a form of
fiction, founded upon fact. But, so long as
we keep up the pretence of truth-telling, I
cannot see how we can logically hush up any
side of our great men. It is only a very
childish, incomplete view of human nature
that would ask it. Surely a great man hangs
together like any other organism, and to
ignore any one element in him is to stultify
the rest. To pretend to know Hazlitt and
to ignore the *' Liber Amoris " is, in a less
degree, as though you should write a life of
Coleridge and never even whisper " opium."
But, whereas Coleridge's weakness was dis-

INTRODUCTION. xlvii.

astrous, Hazlitt's was only silly. It did no
one any harm but himself.

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.

NOTE. In the following reprint of the "Liber
Amoris " the text of the original edition (1823) has
been scrupulously followed. There has been but one
other reprint, that in the " Bibliotheca Curiosa "
[? 1884]. My best thanks are due: to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt
for his kindness in allowing me to print the extrac t
from Mr. Hazlitfs diary, and to make other use of
his "Memoirs" of his illustrious grandfather ; also
to Mr. Coventry Pat more for a similar permission in
the case of Mr. P. G. Patmore's "My Friends and
Acquaintances"; also to Mr. Alexander Ireland and
Mr. William Watson for one or two references.
Among the few accounts of the "Liber Amoris," /
desire to mention a pleasant paper in an old "Fraser,"
which, I understand, was written by Mr. Ashcroft
Noble.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.

EXTRACTS FROM MRS. HAZLITT'S DIARY, ENTITLED
"JOURNAL OF MY TRIP TO SCOTLAND."

Sunday, 2ist [April]. At 5 a.m. calm. At I p.m.
landed safe at Leith. A laddie brought my luggage
with me to the Black Bull, Catherine Street,
Edinburgh. Dined at three on mutton chops. Met
Mr. Bell at the door, as I was going to take a walk
after dinner. He had been on board the vessel to
inquire for me. After he went, I walked up to Edin-
burgh. . . . Returned to tea. . . . Went
to bed at half-past twelve.

Monday, 22nd [April]. . . . Mr. Bell called
about twelve, and I went with him to Mr. Cranstoun,
the barrister, to consult him on the practicability and
safety of procuring a divorce, and informed him that
my friends in England had rather alarmed me by
asserting that, if I took the oath of calumny, and
swore that there was no collusion between Mr. Hazlitt
and myself to procure the divorce, I should be liable
to a prosecution and transportation for perjury. Mr.
Hazlitt having certainly told me that he should never
live with me again, and as my situation must have
long been uncomfortable, he thought for both our
sakes it would be better to obtain a divorce, and put
an end to it. . .

Hi. APPENDIX I.

Tuesday 23rd. Consulted Mr. Gray [a solicitor].

The case must be submitted to the

procurators to decide whether I may be admitted to
the oath of calumny. If they agree to it, the oath
to be administered, then Mr. Hazlitt to be cited in
answer to the charge, and if not defended [I told
him I was sure Mr. Hazlitt had no such intention, as
he was quite as desirous of obtaining the divorce as
me], he said then, if no demur or difficulty arose
about proofs, the cause would probably occupy two
months, and cost 50, but that I should have to send
to England for the testimony of two witnesses who
were present at the marriage, and also to testify that
we acknowledged each other as husband and wife,
and were so esteemed by our friends, neighbours,
acquaintances, &c. He said it was fortunate that
Mr. and Mrs. Bell were here to bear testimony to the
latter part. And that I must also procure a certifi-
cate of my marriage from St. Andrew's Church,
Holborn. I took the questions which Mr. Gray

wrote to Mr. Bell, who added a note,

and I put it in the penny post. ' Sent also the paper
signed by Mr. Hazlitt securing the reversion of my
money to the child, which Mr. Bell had given me, by
the mail to Coulson, requesting him to get it properly
stamped and return it to me, together with the cer-
tificate of my marriage

Thursday, 2$th April [1822]. Mr. Bell called to
ask if he could be of any assistance to me. I had
just sent a note to Mr. Hazlitt to say that I demurred

APPENDIX I. hii.

to the oath, so there was no occasion to trouble Mr.
Bell. In the afternoon Mr. Ritchie, of the Scotsman
newspaper, called to beg me, as a friend to both (I
had never seen or heard of him before), to proceed in
the divorce, and relieve all parties from an unpleasant
situation, Said that with my appearance it was
highly probable that I might marry again, and meet
with a person more congenial to me than Mr. Hazlitt
had unfortunately proved. That Mr. Hazlitt was in
such a state of nervous irritability that he could not
work or apply to anything, and that he thought that
he would not live very long if he was not easier in
his mind. I told him I did not myself think that he

would survive me In the evening Mr.

Bell called I then told him of Mr.

Ritchie's visit, at which he seemed much surprised,
and said if Mr. Hazlitt had sent him, as I supposed,
he acted with great want of judgment and prudence.

Saturday, 27 th April. Gave Mr. Bell the stamp
for the 5<3/. bill, and the following paper of memo-
randum for Mr. Hazlitt to sign :

"I. William Hazlitt to pay the whole expense of
board, clothing, and education, for his son, William
Hazlitt, by his wife, Sarah Hazlitt (late Stoddart),
and she to be allowed free access to him at all times,
and occasional visits from him.

" 2. William Hazlitt to pay board, lodging, law,
and all other expenses incurred by his said wife
during her stay in Scotland on this divorce business,

v. APPENDIX I.

together with travelling expenses.

"3. William Hazlitt to give a note-of-hand for
fifty pounds at six months, payable to William
Netherfold or order. Value Received."

Mr. Bell said he would go that day to Mr. Gray

then go oil to Mr. Hazlitt's, and call

on me afterwards ; but I saw no more of him.

Sunday, 2%th April, 1822. Wrote to Mr. Hazlitt
to inform him I had only between five and six pounds
of my quarter's money left, and therefore, if he did
not send me some immediately, and fulfil his agree-
ment for the rest, I should be obliged to return on
Tuesday, while I had enough to take me back. Sent
the letter by a laddie. Called on Mr. Bell, who said
that Mr. Gray was not at home when he called, but
that he had seen his son, and appointed to be with
him at ten o'clock on Monday morning. Told him
that Mr. Hazlitt said he would give the draft to fifty
pounds at three months instead of six, when the pro-
ceedings had commenced (meaning, I suppose, when
the oath was taken, for they had already commenced)
but would do nothing before. Told me he was gone
to Lanark, but would be back on Monday morning.

Tuesday, y>th April. Went to Mr. Bell after
dinner, who did not know whether Mr. Hazlitt was

returned or not In the evening, after

some hesitation, went to Mr. Hazlitt myself for an
answer. He told me he expected thirty pounds from
Colburn on Thursday, and then he would let me

APPENDIX I. Iv.

have five pounds for present expenses ; that he had
but one pound in his pocket, but if I wanted it, I
should have that. That he was going to give two
lectures at Glasgow next week, for which he was to
have ioo/., and he had eighty pounds beside to
receive for the 'Table Talk' in a fortnight, out of
which sums he pledged himself to fulfil his engage-
ments relative to my expenses : and also to make me
a handsome present, when it was over (2o/.), as I
seemed to love money. Or it would enable me to
travel back by land, as I said I should prefer seeing
something of the country to going back in the steam-
boat, which he proposed. Said he would give the
note-of-hand for fifty pounds to Mr. Ritchie for me,
payable to whoever I pleased : if he could con-
veniently at the time, it should be for three months
instead of six, but he was not certain of that. . . .
Inquired if I had taken the oath. I told him I only
waited a summons from Mr. Gray, if I could depend
upon the money, but I could not live in a strange
place without : and I had no friends or means of
earning money here as he had ; though as I had still
four pounds, I could wait a few days. I asked him
how the expenses, or my draught, were to be paid,
if he went abroad, and he answered that, if he suc-
ceeded in the divorce, he should be easy in his mind,
and able to work, and then he should probably be
back in three months ; but otherwise, he might leave
England for ever. He said that as soon as I had got
him to sign a paper giving away a ISO/, a year from

Ivi. APPENDIX I.

himself, I talked of going back, and leaving every-
thing I told him to recollect that it was

no advantage for myself that I sought .... it
was only to secure something to his child as well as
mine. He said he could do very well for the child
himself; and that he was allowed to be a very indul-
gent, kind father some people thought too much so.
I said I did not dispute his fondness for him, but I
must observe that though he got a great deal of
money, he never saved or had any by him, or was
likely to make much provision for the child ; neither
could I think it was proper, or for his welfare that he
should take him to the Fives Court, and such places
. . . . it was likely to corrnpt and vitiate him.
. . . . He said perhaps it was wrong, but that
he did not know that it was any good to bring up

children in ignorance of the world He

said I had always despised him and his abilities.
. . . . He said that a paper had been brought to
him from Mr. Gray that day, but that he was only
just come in from Lanark, after walking thirty miles,
and was getting his tea

Thursday, 2nd May [1822].- -Mr. Bell called to say
Mr. Hazlitt would sign the papers to-morrow and
leave [them] in his hand. And that he should bring
me the first five pounds. When he was gone, I
wrote to Mr. Hazlitt, requesting him to leave the
papers in Mr. Ritchie's hands, as he had before pro-
posed.

Friday, $rd May. Received the certificate of my

APPENDIX T. Ivii.

marriage, and the stamped paper transferring my
money to the child after my death, from Coulsou,
the carnage of which cost seven shillings. Called on
Mr. Gray, who said, on my asking him when my
presence would be necessary in the business, that he
should not call on me till this day three weeks.

Saturday, ^th May, 1822. Mr. Ritchie called,
and gave me 4/., said Mr. Hazlitt could not spare
more then, as he was just setting off for Glasgow.

Tuesday, *]th May. Wrote to my little son. . .

Tuesday, 2ist May. Wrote to Mr. Hazlitt for
money. The note was returned with a message that
he was gone to London, and would not be back for a
fortnight.

Wednesday, 22nd. Called on Mr. Ritchie to
inquire what I was to do for money, as Mr. Hazlitt
had gone off without sending me any : he seemed
surprised to hear he was in London, but conjectured
he was gone about the publication of his book, took
his address, and said he would write to him in the
evening.

Sunday, qth June, 1822. Sent a letter to Mr.
Hazlitt to remit the money he had promised.

Monday, loth June. .... Received a
note from Mr. Ritchie, to say he would come the
next day and explain about money matters to me.
Had also a letter from the child

Tuesday, nth June. .... Mr. Ritchie

Iviii. APPENDIX i.

came Told me that Mr. Hazlitt only

got 56^. from Glasgow, and nothing from Colburn,
so that he could not give me the money I asked, but
that he had told him whatever small sums of money
I wanted to go on with, he would let me have by
some means or other.

Thursday, i$th June [1822]. Mr. Bell called,
and said that Mr. Hazlitt had gone to Renton Inn,
but that he would remit me some money, which he
showed him he had for the purpose, as soon as the
oath was taken, which he said he was to give him
due notice of. .... Asked if I did not take
the oath to-morrow ? I said I had not heard from
Mr. Gray, but was in hourly expectation of it. ...
The note came soon after, appointing the next day.

Friday, i^th June. Mr. Bell called, and said he
was going to Mr. Gray's, and would come back for
me. Returned, and said Mr. Gray informed him he
could not be admitted, as he would be called on with
Mrs. Bell the next Friday as witnesses. So I under-
took to let him know when the ceremony was over.
[Here follows the description of the taking of the
oath.] .... On the whole, with the utmost
expedition they can use, and supposing no impedi-
ments, it will be five weeks from this day before all is
finished. Went down and reported this to Mr. and
Mrs. Bell : dined there. They told me that Mr.
Hazlitt took gol. to the Renton Inn with him. . . .
Mr. Bell undertook to send him a parcel that night

APPENDIX I. Hx.

with the joyful intelligence of the oath being taken,
as he would get it sooner that way than by the post.

Saturday, i$th June. Mr. Bell called, and wrote
a letter to Mr. Hazlitt here, and made it into a
parcel, not having sent to him last night, as he
promised. Wrote to Peggy. Feel very faint to-day.

Sunday, i6t/i June [1822]. .... Adam
Bell called, while I was at breakfast, to say that Mr.
Hazlitt was come back, and had been at their house
the night before

Monday, I'jth June. Went to Mr. Bell as soon
as I had breakfasted. He told me that Mr. Ritchie
was to bring me 2ol. that day in part of payment,
and that the rest would he paid me as Mr. Hazlitt
could get it. That he had proposed only ten now,
but that Mr. Bell had told him that that would not
do, as I proposed taking some journey, and had no
money. Said he did not know anything about the
child. Went home very uneasy about him, as his
holidays were to begin this day ; and I fretted that
he should be left there, and thought he would be
very uneasy if they had not sent him to Winterslow,
and feel quite unhappy and forsaken ; and thought
on his father's refusing to tell me where he was to
be, till I was so nervous and hysterical I could not
stay in the house.

Went down to Mr. Bell's again at one, as they
told me he [Mr. H.] would be there about that time,
that I might see him myself, and know where the

x. APPENDIX T.

child was. He was not come, and Mr. Bell did not
like my meeting him there. I told him if I could
not gain information of the child, I would set off to
London directly, and find him out, and leave the
business here just as it was. He then gave me a
note to send him [Mr. H.] about it, but I carried it
myself, and asked to see him.

They said he was out, but would return at three

o'clock. I left the note, and went at three. They

then said he would be back to dinner at four. I

wandered about between that and Mr. Bell's till

four ; then, going again, I met him by the way : he

gave me io/., and said I should have more soon by

V" Mr. Bell. I said I did not like Mr. Bell ; I had

' rather he sent by Mr. Ritchie, which he said he

\ _would.

I asked about the child, and he said he was going
to write that night to Mr. John Hunt about him ; so
that the poor little fellow is really fretting, and think-
ing himself neglected

Mr. Bell said that he seemed quite enamoured of
a letter he had been writing to Patmore ; that in
their walk the day before he pulled it out of his
pocket twenty times, and wanted to read it to them ;
that he talked so loud, and acted so extravagantly,
that the people stood and stared at them as they
passed, and seemed to take him for a madman. . .

[The next twelve days were spent by Mrs. H. in
the tour to the Highlands and to Dublin. She.
returned on the 28th June.]

APPENDIX I. Ixi.

Saturday, 2<)th June, 1822. Sent the child's
letter to his father with a note, telling him that I
was just returned from Dublin with four shillings and
sixpence in my pocket, and I wanted more money.
He came about two o'clock, and brought me ten
pounds, and said he did not think he was indebted to
me my quarter's money, as he had supplied me with

more than was necessary to keep me He

had been uneasy at not hearing from the child,
though he had sent him a pound and ordered him to
write. I remarked that the letter I sent him was
addressed to him, and I supposed the child did not
know how to direct to him. He said he would if he
had attended to what he told him. That he wrote
to Patmore, and desired him to see for the child, and
convey him to Mr. John Hunt's, and that in his
answer he said, " I have been to the school, and
rejoiced the poor little fellow's heart by bringing him
away with me, and in the afternoon he is going by
the stage to Mr. Hunt's* He has only been detained
two days after the holidays begun." . . . That
Mr. Prentice had told him last night it [the business]
was again put off another fortnight ; requested me to
write to Mr. Gray, to know whether I should be
called on next Friday, and if it would be necessary
for me to remain in Scotland after that time ; if not,
he thought I had better go on the Saturday by the
steamboat, as the accommodation was excellent, and

* At Taunton.

Ixii. APPENDIX I.

it was very pleasant aud good company. That he
intended going by it himself, as soon as he could,
when the affair was over, and therefore I had better
set out first, as our being seen there together would
be awkward, and would look like making a mockery
of the lawyers here. Wished I would also write to
the child in the evening, as his nerves were in. such
an irritable state he was unable to do so. Both
which requests I complied with.

Monday, 1st July. Received a note from Mr.
Gray, to say I should not be called on for two or
three weeks, but without telling me how long I must
remain in Scotland.

Saturday, 6th July [1822].. . . . Met Mr.
Hazlitt and Mr. Henderson, who had just arrived [at
Dalkeith Palace] in a gig. Mr. H. said he had heard
again from Patmore, who saw the child last Tuesday,
and that he was well and happy. I told him of my

last letter and its contents [He] adverted

again to the awkwardness of our going back in the
same boat. I told him I had some thoughts of going
by boat to Liverpool and the rest by land, as I should
see more of the country that way ; which he seemed
to like. Asked me if I meant to go to Winterslow ?
Said, yes, but that I should be a week or two in
London first. He said he meant to go to Winter-
slow, aud try if he could write,* for he had been so
distracted the last five months he could do nothing.

* Mrs. H. had a house in the village, but Mr. H. put up at
the Hut. A strangely close juxtaposition I

APPENDIX 1. Ixiii.

That he might also go to his mother's f for a short
time, and that he meant to take the child from school
at the half-quarter, and take him with him ; and that
after the holidays at Christmas he should return to
Mr. Dawson's again. Said he had not been to town
[London], and that we had better have no communi-
cation at present, but that when it was over he would
let me have the money as he could get it. Asked if
I had seen Roslin Castle, and said he was there last
Tuesday with Bell, and thought it a fine place. Mr.
Henderson shook hands, and made many apologies
for not recollecting me, and said I looked very well,
but that from my speaking to Mr. H. about the

pictures, he had taken me for an artist

The two gentlemen passed me in their gig as I was
returning.

Wednesday, loth July [1822]. Called on Mr.
Ritchie, to ask if he thought I should finish the
business on Monday ? I told him that I wanted to
know what was to be done about my own payment,
as Mr. Hazlitt now seemed to demur to the one
quarter that he had all along agreed to, and there
was also the 2ol. that I was to have as a present. He
said that he was at present very much engaged in
some business which would end in two days more,
and that then, if I was at all apprehensive about it,
he would write to, or see, Mr. Hazlitt on the subject.

Thursday, 1 1 th July. Met Mr. Hazlitt in

+ At Alphington, near Exeter.

Ixiv. APPENDIX I.

Catherine Street, and asked him what I was to do if
Mr. Gray sent in my bill to me, and he said I had
nothing to do with it, for that he had paid Mr.
Prentice 4O/., which was nearly the whole expense for
both of them. I said that was what Mr. Ritchie, to
whom I had spoken about it, thought. He said Mr.
Ritchie had nothing at all to do with it, and I
remarked that he was the person he had sent to me
about it, and that he did not think it would finish on
Monday; and [I] asked if he had heard anything
more ? He said no, but he thought it would be
Monday or Tuesday ; and as soon as it was done, he
wished I would come to him to finally settle matters,
as he had some things to say, and I told him I
would. I was rather flurried at meeting him, and
totally forgot many things I wished to have said,
which vexed me afterwards.

Friday -, \2th July. On my return [from a walk to
Holyrood House] I found a note from Mr. Gray,
appointing next Wednesday for my attendance, and
desiring a " payment of 2Ol. towards the expense.
I took it to Mr. Bell's ; he and Mr. Hazlitt went out
at the back door as I went in at the front. I gave
the message to Mrs. Bell, who told me Mr. Hazlitt
had been to Mr. Gray's. . .

Saturday, i$th July. Met Mr. Hazlitt at the foot
of my stairs, coming to me. He said that Mr. Gray
was to have the money out of what he had paid Mr.

Prentice I told him he need not be"

uneasy about meeting me in the steamboat, for I did

APPENDIX I. 1XV.

not intend to go that way. Asked him if he thought
it a good collection of pictures at Dalkeith House
[this is so characteristic!]; he said no, very poor.

Wednesday, i^th July. Mr. Bell called between

ten and eleven He had come, by Mr.

Gray's desire, to accompany me to the court, and was
himself cited as a witness. [Mrs. H. then describes
going to the court, but the proceedings were pro
formd, as the depositions had been arranged to be
taken at Mr. Bell's private residence.] Returned,
and wrote a note to Mr. Hazlitt, to have in case he
was out, saying that I would call on him at two

o'clock. I left it Saw Mr. Hazlitt at

four o'clock ; he was at dinner ; but I stopped and
drank tea with him. [ ! ] He told me that all was
done now, unless Mrs. Bell should make any demur

in the part required of her Said he

would set off to London by the mail that night,
though he thought he should be detained by illness
or die on the road, for he had been penned up in that
house for five months .... unable to do any
work ; and he thought he had lost the job to Italy,
but to get out of Scotland would seem like the road
to Paradise. / fold him* he Jmd done a most in-

* The italics are mine. This passage must find room here
in spite of my scruples. The affair was well known, and was
soon in print in the ' Liber Amoris.' To conceal it would be
useless ; and all that I can do is to place it in its true light
before the world. Mrs. H. was a plaia - spoken woman,
without any false delicacy about her. She was perfect ij
acquainted with the whole history of the matter. --[J/r, W-
C. Hazlitfs note,]

Ixvi. APPENDIX I.

judicious thing in publishing what he did in the
[New Monthly] Magazine about Sarah Walker, par-
ticularly at this time, and that he might be sure it
would be made use of against him, and that every"
body in London had thought it a most improper
thing, and Mr. John Hunt was quite sorry that he
had so committed himself*

He said that he was sorry for [it], but that it was
done without his knowledge or consent. That Colburn
had got hold of it by mistake, with other papers, and
published it without sending him the proofs. He
asked me where I should be in town, and I told him
at Christie's. He inquired what kind of people they
were. I told him a very respectable quiet young
couple lately married. He desired me to take care of
rrryself, and keep up a respectable appearance, as I
had money enough to do so. He\ wished he could
marry some woman with a good fortune, that he
might not be under the necessity of writing another
line ; and be enabled to provide for the child, and do
something for John ; and that now his name was
known in the literary world, he thought there was a
chance for it, though he could not pretend to any-
thing of the kind before I left Mr.

Henderson with him, pressing him to accompany him

to the Highlands ; but he seemed, after some hesita-

* See note at end.

+ The italics are mine. The John referred to presently
was, of course, his brother. This passage is very remarkable.
{Mr. W. C. HazliWs note.]

APPENDIX I. Ixvii.

tion, to prefer going to London, though I left the
matter uncertain. He [Mr. Henderson] had been
dawdling backward and forward about it for three
weeks, wishing to have the credit of taking him
there, but grudging the money, though he was living
upon us for a week together in London.

Mr. Hazlitt said that, if he went to Winterslow, he
would take the child, as he wished to have him a
little with him ; so I thought he had better go with
the first that went, as I did not think of staying in
town more than two or three weeks, and then making
some stay at Winterslow, and proceeding afterwards
to Crediton.* He said we could settle that best in
town.

Mrs. Dow [Mr. H.'s landlady] brought in the bill,
which he just looked at and said, " Is that the
whole, ma'am ? " " Yes, sir ; you had better look
over it, and see that it is correct, if you please."
"That, ma'am," he said, "is one of the troubles I
get rid of. I never do it." "You are a very indolent
man, sir." " There is a balance of twenty-four
shillings, ma'am ; can you have so much confidence
in me as to let me have that ?" "No, sir, I can't do
that, for I have not the money." "I shall be glad
then, ma'am, if you will let me have the four
shillings, and you may pay the pound to Mrs. Hazlitt

* Where Mr. H.'s relations were settled I This is also a
curious part of the business. My grandmother was intimate
and friendly with the Hazlitts to the last, and frequently
visited them here. [Mr. W. C. Hazlitfs note.]

Ixviii. APPENDIX i.

on Saturday, as when it comes, she will be here."
" Yes, sir, and Mrs. Hazlitt may look over the bill, if
she pleases."

Thursday, iSfk July [1822]. She returned with
the four shillings, saying she had been to two or

three places to get that Went to Mr.

Ritchie, who gave me the note-of-hand for fifty
pounds at six months, dated 6th May, and the copy

of memorandums signed by Mr. Hazlitt

He said he had expected him and Mr. Henderson to
supper last night, but they did not come. I told
him he wished to go to London by the mail, and

probably had done so He said he must

repeat that he thought we had taken the step most

advisable for both parties Called at his

[Mr. H.'s] lodgings to inquire if he went by the mail.
Mrs. Dow said yes ; he left there about eight o'clock.
. . . . Called at the coach-office, and they said
Mr. Hazlitt did not go by the mail. Saw the waiter
at the inn door, who said he went by the steamboat
at eight o'clock this morning. . , . . .

Carried back Mrs. Bell's book. Mr. Bell said I
was a great fool to have acceded to his wish for a
divorce, but that it was now done, and he thought I
had better get some old rich Scotch lord, and marry
here. "I was now Miss Stoddart, and was I not
glad of that ? " " No ; I had no intention of marry-
ing, and should not do what he talked of." He said
I must needs marry ; and I told him I saw no such
necessity "

APPBNDIX I. Ixix.

This is the conclusion. Mrs. Hazlitt sailed on the
following day, at 2 p.m., in the smack Favourite
from Leith.

PASSAGE IN ESSAY "ON GREAT AND LITTLE
THINGS" (WRITTEN JANUARY, 1821, PRINTED IN
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, N.S. VOL. iv. 1822 ;

AND REPRINTED IN "TABLE TALK") REFERRED

TO IN MRS. HAZLITT'S DIARY, PP. LXV. AND LXVI.

"This is the misery of unequal matches. The woman
cannot easily forget, or think that others forget, her
origin ; and with perhaps superior sense and beauty,
keeps painfully in the back-ground. It is worse
when she braves this conscious feeling, and displays
all the insolence of the upstart and affected fine lady.
But shouldst thou ever, my Infelice, grace my home
with thy loved presence, as thou hast cheered my
hopes with thy smile, thou wilt conquer all hearts
with thy prevailing gentleness, arid I will show the
world what Shakespear's women were ! Some
gallants set their hearts on princesses; others descend
in imagination to women of quality ; others are mad
after opera-singers. For my part, I am shy even of
actresses, and should not think of leaving my card
with Madame Vestris. I am for none of these bonnes
fortunes ; but for a list of humble beauties, servant-
maids and shepherd-girls, with their red elbows, hard

APPENDIX i. 'Ixxi.

hands, black stockings and mob-caps, I could furnish
out a gallery equal to Cowley's, and paint them half
as well. Oh ! might I but attempt a description of
some of them in poetic prose, Don Juan would forget
his Julia, and Mr. Davison might both print and
publish this volume. I agree so far with Horace, and
differ with Montaigne. I admire the Clementinas
and Clarissas at a distance : the Pamelas and Fannys
of Richardson and Fielding make my blood tingle.
I have written love-letters to such in my time, d^un
pathetique a faire fendre les rochers, and with about
as much effect as if they had been addressed to
stone. The simpletons only laughed, and said, that
" those were not the sort of things to gain the
affections." I wish I had kept copies in my own
justification. What is worse, I have an utter aversion
to blue stockings. I do not care a fig for any woman
.-4hat knows even what an author means. If I know
C that she has read anything I have written, I cut her
V acquaintance immediately. This sort of literary inter-
course with me passes for nothing. Her critical and
scientific acquirements are carrying coals to New-
castle. I do not want to be told that I have published
such or such a work. I knew all this before. It
makes no addition to my sense of power. I do not
wish the affair to be brought about in that way. I
would have her read my soul : she should understand
the language of the heart : she should know what I
am, as if she were another self ! She should love me
for myself alone. I like myself without any reason :

APPENDIX I.

I*would have her do so too. This is not very reason-
able. I abstract from my temptations to admire all
the circumstances of dress, birth, breeding, fortune ;
and I would not willingly put forward my own pre-
tensions, whatever they may be. The image of some
fair creature is engraven on my inmost soul ; it is on
that I build my claim to her regard, and expect her to
see into my heart, as I see her form always before me.
Wherever she treads, pale primroses, like her face,
vernal hyacinths, like her brow, spring up beneath her
feet, and music hangs on every bough : but all is cold,
barren, and desolate without her. Thus I feel, and
thus I think. But have I ever told her so ? No. Or
if I did, would she understand it ? No. I " hunt the
wind, I worship a statue, cry aloud to the desert."
To see beauty is not to be beautiful, to pine in love is
not to be loved again. I always was inclined to raise
and magnify the power of Love. I thought that his
sweet power should only be exerted to join together
the loveliest forms and fondest hearts ; that none but
those in whom his godhead shone putwardly, and was
inly felt, should ever partake of his triumphs ; and I
stood and gazed at a distance, as unworthy to mingle
in so bright a throng, and did not (even for a moment)
wish to tarnish the glory of so fair a vision by being
myself admitted into it. I say this was my notion
once, but God knows it was one of the errors of my
youth. For coming nearer to look, I saw the maimed,
the blind, and the halt enter in, the crooked and the
dwarf, the ugly, the old and impotent, the man of

APPENDIX i. Ixxiii.

pleasure and the man of the world, the dapper and the
pert, the vain and shallow boaster, the fool and the
pedant, the ignorant and brutal, and all that is farthest
removed from earth's fairest-born, and the pride of
human life. Seeing all these enter the courts of Love,
and thinking that I also might venture in under favour
of the crowd, but finding myself rejected, I fancied
(I might be wrong) that it was not so much because I
was below, as above the common standard. I did
feel, but I was ashamed to feel, mortified at my repulse,
when I saw the meanest of mankind, the very scum
and refuse, all creeping things and every obscene
creature, enter in before me. I seemed a species by
myself. I took a pride even in my disgrace : and
concluded I had elsewhere my inheritance ! The only
thing I ever piqued myself upon was the writing the
1 ' Essay on the Principles of Human Action ' ' * a work
that no woman ever read, or would ever comprehend
the meaning of. But if I do not build my claim to
regard on the pretensions I have, how can I build it
on those I am totally without ? Or why do I complain
and expect to gather grapes of thorns, or figs of
thistles ? Thought has in me cancelled pleasure ; and
this dark forehead, bent upon truth, is the rock on
which all affection has split. And thus I waste my
life in one long sigh ; nor ever (till too late) beheld a
gentle face turned gently upon mine ; . . . . But no ! not

* Published in 1805, but the composition of the work, though
a thin octavo, cost the author seven or eight years' labour.

[ED.]

Ixxiv. APPENDIX I.

too late, if that face, pure, modest, downcast, tender,
with angel sweetness, not only gladdens the prospect
of the future, but sheds its radiance on the past,
smiling in tears. A purple light hovers round my
head. The air of love is in the room. As I look at
my long-neglected copy of the Death of Clorinda,*
golden gleams play upon the canvas, as they used
when I painted it. The flowers of Hope and Joy
springing up in my mind, recal the time when they
first bloomed there. The years that are fled knock at
the door and enter. I am in the Louvre once more.
The sun of Austerlitz has not set. It still shines
here in my heart ; and he, the son of glory, is not
dead, nor ever shall, to me. I am as when my life
began. The rainbow is in the sky again. I see the
skirts of the departed years. All that I have thought
and felt has not been in vain. I am not utterly
worthless, unregarded ; nor shall I die and wither of
pure scorn. Now could I sit on the tomb of Liberty,
and write a Hymn to Love. Oh ! if I am deceived,
let me be deceived still. Let me live in the Elysium
of those soft looks ; poison me with kisses, kill me
with smiles ; but still mock me with thy love ! f

, By Lana, Titian's contemporary. It was copied by the
writer in 1802, and is still in good preservation. [En.]

+ I beg the reader to consider this passage merely as a
specimen of the mock-heroic style, and as having nothing to
do with any real facts or feelings.

APPENDIX II.

EXTRACTS OF LETTERS FROM W. HAZLITT TO
P. G. PATMORE (DATED BETWEEN MARCH AND
JULY, 1822).

"What have I suffered since I parted with you!
A raging fire in my heart and in my brain, that I
thought would drive me mad. The steam-boat
seemed a prison a hell and the everlasting waters
an unendurable repetition of the same idea my woes.
The abyss was before me, and her face, where all my
peace was centred all lost ! I felt the eternity of
punishment in this world. Mocked, mocked by her
in whom I placed my hope writhing, withering in
misery and despair, caused by one who hardens
herself against me. I wished for courage to throw
myself into the waters ; but I could not even do that
and my little boy, too, prevented me, when I
thought of his face at hearing of his father's death,
and his desolation in life.

" You see she all along hated me (< I always told
you I had no affection for you '), and only played with

Ixxvi. APPENDIX II.

" I am a little, a very little, better to-day. Would
it were quietly over, and that this form, made to be
loathed, were hid out of sight of cold, sullen eyes.
I thought of the breakfasts I had promised myself
with her, of those I had had with her, standing and
listening to my true vows ; and compared them to the
one I had this morning. The thought choked me.
The people even take notice of my dumb despair, and
pity me. What can be done ? I cannot forget her,
and I can find no other like what she seemed. I
should like you to see her, and learn whether I
may come back again as before, and whether she will
see and talk to me as an old friend. Do as you think
best."

"I got your letter this morning, and I kiss the rod,
not only with submission, but with gratitude. Your
rebukes of me and your defence of her are the only
things that save my soul from hell. She is rny
soul's idol, and, believe me, those words of yours
applied to the dear creature (' to lip a chaste one and
suppose her wanton ') were balm and rapture to me.

"Be it known to you, that while I write this, I am
drinking ale* at the Black Bull, celebrated in Black-
wood's. It is owing to your letter. Could I think
her ' honest,' I am proof even against Edinburgh ale !

He had not for years previously touched anything but
water, except his beloved tea, nor did he afterwards, up to th
period of his last illness.

APPENDIX II.

She, by her silence, makes my ' dark hour,' and you
dissipate it for four-and-twenty hours.

******

" I have seen the great little man,f and he is very
gracious to me. I tell him I am dull and out of
spirits, but he says he cannot perceive it. He is a
person of infinite vivacity. My Sardanapalus is to
be in.}:

" In my judgment, Myrrha is just like ,

only I am not like Sardanapalus.

" Do you think if she knew how I love her, my
depressions and my altitudes, my wanderings and my
pertinacity, it would not melt her ? She knows it all !
I don't believe that any human being was ever courted
more passionately than she has been by me. As
Rousseau said of Madame d'Houdetot (forgive the
allusion), my soul has found a tongue in speaking to
her, and I have talked to her in the divine language
of love. Yet she says she is insensible to it. Am I
to believe her or you ? You ; for I wish it to mad-
ness."

" The deed is done, and I am virtually a free man.

* * * What had I better do in these

circumstances ? I dare not write to her I dare not

write to her father. She has shot me through with

t Jeffrey.

t An article in the Edinburgh Review on Byron's tragedy
so called.

Ixxviii. APPENDIX II.

poisoned arrows, and I think another 'winged wound '
would finish me. It is a pleasant sort of balm she
has left in my heart. One thing I agree with you in
it will remain there for ever but yet not long. It
festers and consumes me. If it were not for my little
boy, whose face I see struck blank at the news, and
looking through the world for pity, and meeting with
contempt, I should soon settle the question by my
death. That is the only thought that brings my
wandering reason to an anchor that excites the least
interest, or gives me fortitude to bear up against what
I am doomed to feel for the ungrateful. Otherwise,
I am dead to all but the agony of what I have lost.
She was my life it is gone from me, and I am grown
spectral. If it is a place I know, it reminds me of
her of the way in which my fond heart brooded over
her. If it is a strange place, it is desolate, hateful,
barren of all interest for nothing touches me but what
has a reference to her. There is only she in the world
1 the false, the fair, the inexpressive she.' If the
clock strikes, the sound jars me, for a million of hours
will never bring peace to my breast. The light
startles me, the darkness terrifies me I seem falling
into a pit, without a hand to help me. She came (I
knew not how) and sat by my side, and was folded in
my arms, a vision of love and joy as if she had
dropped from the heavens, to bless me by some
special dispensation of a favouring Providence to
make me amends for all. And now, without
any fault of mine but too much love, she has vanished

APPENDIX II. Ixxix.

from me, and I am left to wither. My heart is torn
out of me, and every feeling for which I wished to
live. It is like a dream, an enchantment it torments
me, and makes me mad. I lie down with it I rise
up with it and I see no chance of repose. I grasp
at a shadow I try to undo the past, or to make that
mockery real and weep with rage and pity over my
own weakness and misery. * *

"I had hopes, I had prospects to come the
flattering of something like fame a pleasure in
writing health even would have come back to me
with her smile. She has blighted all turned all to
poison and drivelling tears. Yet the barbed arrow
is in my heart I can neither endure it nor draw it out,
for with it flows my life's blood. I had dwelt too
long upon Truth to trust myself with the immortal

thoughts of love. That might have

been mine and now never can : these are the two
sole propositions that for ever stare me in the face,
and look ghastly in at my poor brain. I am in some
i /"sense proud that I can feel this dreadful passion. It
\ makes me a kind of peer in the kingdom of love.
!But I could have wished it had been for an object
that, at least, could have understood its value and
pitied its excess. * * * The gates of
Paradise were once open to me, and I blushed to
enter but with the golden keys of love ! I would die
but her lover my love of her ought not to die.
When I am dead, who will love her as I have done ?
If she should be in misfortune, who will comfort her ?

1XXX. APPENDIX II.

When she is old, who will look in her face and bless
her ? * * * Oh, answer me, to save me
if possible for her and from myself !

" Will you call at Mr. 's school, and tell my

little boy I'll write to him or see him on Saturday
morning. Poor little fellow ! "

" Your letter raised me a moment from the depths
of despair ; but, not hearing from you yesterday or
to-day (as I hoped), I am gone back again. You say
I want to get rid of her. I hope you are more right
in your conjectures about her than in this about me.
Oh, no ! believe it, I love her as I do my own soul :
my heart is wedded to her, be she what she may ;
and I would not hesitate a moment between her and
an angel from heaven. I grant all you say about my
self-tormenting madness; but has it been without
cause ? Has she not refused me again and again with
scorn and abhorence ? * * * ' She can
make no more confidences ! ' These words ring for
ever in my ears, and will be my deathwatch. My
poor fond heart, that brood.ed over her, and the
remains of her affections, as my only hope of comfort
upon earth, cannot brook or survive this vulgar
degradation. Who is there so low as 1 ? Who is
there besides, after the homage I have paid her, and
the caresses she has lavished on me, so vile, so filthy,
so abhorrent to love, to whom such an indignity could
have happened ? When I think of this (and I think

APPENDIX II. Ixxxi.

of it for ever, except when I read your letters), the
air I breathe stifles me. I am pent up in burning
impotent desires, which can find no vent or object.
I am hated, repulsed, bemocked, by all I love. I
cannot stay in any place, and find no rest or
interruption from the thought of her contempt, and
her ingratitude. I can do nothing. What is the use
of all I have done ? Is it not that my thinking beyond
my strength, my feeling more than I ought about
so many things, has withered me up, and made me
a thing for love to shrink from and wonder at ? Who
could ever feel that peace from the touch of her hand
that I have done ; and is it not torn for ever from me ?
My state is, that I feel I shall never lie down again
at night, nor rise up of a morning in peace, nor ever
behold my little boy's face with pleasure while I live,
unless I am restored to her favour. Instead of that
delicious feeling I had when she was heavenly kind to
me, and my heart softened and melted in its own
tenderness and her sweetuess, I am now enclosed in
a dungeon of despair. The sky is marble, like my
thoughts; nature is dead without me, as hope is
within me ; no object can give me one gleam of
satisfaction now, or the prospect of it in time to come.
I wander, or rather crawl, by the seaside; and the
eternal ocean, and lasting despair, and her face, are
before me. Hated, mocked by her on whom my
heart by its last fibre hung. I wake with her by my
side, not as my sweet companion, but as the corpse
of my love, without a heart in her cold, insensible,

Ixxxii. APPENDIX II.

or struggling from me ; and the worm gnaws me, and
the sting of unrequited love, and the canker of a
hopeless, endless sorrow. I have lost the taste of my
food by feverish anxiety ; and my tea, which used to
refresh me when I got up, has no moisture in it. Oh ?
cold, solitary, sepulchral breakfasts, compared to
those which I made when she was standing by my side ;
my Eve, my guardian angel, my wife, my sister, my
sweet friend, my all. * * * Ah ! what I suffer
now, shows only what I have felt before.

" But you say, ' The girl is a good girl, if there is
goodness in human nature.' I thank you for those
words, and I will fall down and worship you, if you
can prove them true ; and I would not do much less
to him that proves her a demon.

" Do let me know if anything has passed ; suspense
is my greatest torment. I am going to Renton Inn,
to see if I can work a little."

" I ought to have written you before ; but since I
received your letter I have been in a sort of hell. I
would put an end to my torments at once, but that I
am as great a coward as I am a fool. Do you know
that I have not had a word of answer from her since ?
What can be the reason? Is she offended at my
letting you know she wrote to me ? or is it some new
amour? I wrote to her in the tenderest, most
respectful manner poured my soul at her feet and
this is the way she serves me ! Can you account for

APPENDIX ii. Ixxxiii.

it, except on the admission of my worst suspicion ?
God ! can I bear to think of her so or that I am
scorned and made sport of by the creature to whom I
have given my very heart ? I feel like one of the
damned. To be hated, loathed as I have been all my
life, and to feel the utter impossibility of its ever being
otherwise while I live, take what pains I may ! I sit
and cry my eyes out. My weakness grows upon me,
and I have no hope left, unless I could lose my senses
quite. I think I should like this. To forget ah ! to
forget there would be something in that to be an--''
idiot for some few years, and then wake up a poor,
wretched, old man, to recollect my misery as past,
and die ! Yet, oh ! with her, only a little while ago,
I had different hopes forfeited for nothing that I
know of."

" I was in hopes to have got away by the steam-
boat to-morrow, but owing to * * * I
cannot, and may not be in town till another week,
unless I come by the mail, which I am strongly
tempted to do. In the latter case, I shall be there on
Saturday evening. Will you look in and see, about
eight o'clock ? I wish much to see you, and her, and
John Hunt, and my little boy, once more ; and then,
if she is not what she once was to me, I care not if I
die that instant.' '

APPENDIX II.

Many of the letters in the " Nouvelle Heloise " are
among the most beautiful and affecting effusions
which exist in those works of fiction that concern
themselves with sentiment and passion, rather than
with incident and action. But, I venture to say, that
there is nothing in the "Nouvelle Heloise " equal in
passion and pathos to the foregoing extracts. And
the reason is, that the latter are actual and immediate
transcripts from the human heart. In this respect
the letters from which these extracts are taken are,
perhaps, more beautiful and touching than anything
of their kind that was ever given to the world. But
I am far from doubting that innumerable others exist,
equalling them in all the qualities in which they excel ;
for real and intense passion levels all ranks of intellect,
laughs learning and worldly wisdom to scorn, and
invests the common-places of life with the highest
attributes of poetry and eloquence.

Perhaps the published writings most resembling
these letters in the depth and intensity of the passion
they embody and convey, are the celebrated letters
addressed by Mary Woolstoncraft fo Imlay.

[P. G. PATMORE].

APPENDIX III.

LETTERS IN "MEMOIRS" ONLY PARTIALLY IN-
CLUDED IN THE " LIBER AMORIS," AND MR. PAT-
MORE'S "MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES."

"London, January lyth [1822].
" SIR,

"Dr. Read sent the "London Magazine," with
compliments and thanks; no letters or parcels, except
the one which I have sent with the * Magazine,"
according to your directions. Mr. Lamb sent for the
things which you left in our care, likewise a cravat
which was sent with them. I send my thanks for
your kind offer, but must decline accepting it. Baby
is quite well. The first floor is occupied at present ;
it is quite uncertain when it will be disengaged.

"My family send their best respects to you. I
hope, sir, your little son is quite well.

" From yours respectfully,

"S. WALKER.
"W. Hazlitt, Esq."

"It is well I had finished Colburn's work* before
all this came upon me. It is one comfort I have
* The second volume of "Table Talk."

IXXXVI. APPENDIX III.

done that. ... I write this on the supposition
that Mrs. H. may still come here, and that I may be
left in suspense a week or two longer. But, for
God's sake, don't go near the place on my account.
Direct to me at the post-office, and if I return to
town directly, as I fear, I will leave word for them to
forward the letter to me in London not in S. B.
. . . . I have finished the book of my conversa-
tions with her, which I call * Liber Amoris.'

" Yours truly,

"W. H.*
" Edinburgh, March 30.

"P.S. I have seen the great little man,f and he
is very gracious to me. Et sa femme aussi ! I tell
him I am dull and out of spirits. He says he cannot
perceive it. He is a person of an infinite vivacity.
My Sardanapalus J is to be in. In my judgment
Myrrha is most like S.W., only I am not like Sar-
danapalus.

" P. G. Patmore, Esq.,

u 12, Greek Street, Soho, London."

* I am quoting from the original autograph letter : in the
printed copy the text differs.

+ Jeffrey.

t The review of Byron's "Sardanapalus " in the
"Edinburgh."

APPENDIX III. IxXXVli.

[April 7, 1822.]
"MY DEAR FRIEND,

" I received your letter this morning with grati-
tude. I have felt somewhat easier since. It showed
your interest in my vexations, and also that you knew
nothing worse than I did. I cannot describe the
weakness of mind to which she has reduced me. I
am come back to Edinburgh about this cursed busi-
ness, and Mrs. H. is coming down next week. . . .
A thought has struck me. Her father has a bill of
mine for lol. unhonoured, about which I tipped her a
cavalier epistle ten days ago, saying I should be in
town this week, and 'would call and take it up,' but
nothing reproachful. Now if you can get Colburn,
who has a deposit of 220 pp. of the new volume, to
come down with io/., you might call and take up the
aforesaid bill, saying that I am prevented from
coming to town, as I expected, by the business I

came about

"W. H.

"P.S. Could you fill up two blanks for me in
an essay on Burleigh House in Colburn's hands,
one, Lamb's Description of the Sports in the Forest :
see John Woodvil,

To see the sun to bed, and to arise, &c.;

the other, Northcote's account of Claude Lorraine in
his Vision of a Painter at the end of his life of Sir
Joshua ? . . . .

Ixxxviii. APPENDIX in.

"FINAL. Don't go at all To think

that I should feel as I have done for such a monster !
"P. G. Patmore, Esq.,

"12, Greek Street, Soho, London."

[Edinburgh, April 21, 1822.]
" MY DEAR PATMORE,

"I got your letter this morning, and I kiss the rod
not only with submission but gratitude. Your re-
bukes of me and your defences of her are the only
things that save me .... Be it known to you that while
I write this I am drinking ale at the Black Bull,
celebrated in Blackwood. It is owing to your letter.
Could I think the love honest, I am proof against
Edinburgh ale .... Mrs. H. is actually on her way
here. I was going to set off home .... when coming
up Leith Walk I met an old friend come down here
to settle, who said, * I saw your wife at the wharf.

She had just paid passage by the <Supcrl? This

Bell whom I met is the very man to negotiate the
business between us. Should the business succeed,
and I should be free, do you think S. W. will be

Mrs. ? If she "will she shall ; and to call her so

to you, or to hear her called so by others, will be

music to my ears such as they never heard [!]

How I sometimes think of the time I first saw the

sweet apparition, August 16, 1820! I am glad

you go on swimmingly with the N[ew] M[onthly]

APPENDIX III. Ixxxix.

M[agazine]. I shall be back in a week or a month.
I won't write to her.

[No signature].

" I wish Colburn would send me word what he is
about. Tell him what I am about, if you think it
wise to do so.

"P. G. Patmore, Esq.,

"12, Greek Street, Soho, London."

[Between June 3 and June 9, 1822, but undated].

" MY ONLY FRIEND,

" I should like you to fetch the MS S., and then to
ascertain for me whether I had better return there or
not, as soon as this affair is over. I cannot give her up
without an absolute certainty. Only, however, sound
the matter by saying, for instance, that you are
desired to get me a lodging, and that you believe
I should prefer being there to being anywhere else.
You may say that the affair of the divorce is over,

and that I am gone a tour in the Highlands

Ours was the sweetest friendship. Oh ! might the
delusion be renewed, that I might die in it ! Test
her through some one who will satisfy my soul I
have lost only a lonely frail one that I was not likely

to gain by true love. I am going to see K , to

get him to go with me to the Highlands, and talk
about her. I shall be back Thursday week, to

XC. APPENDIX III.

appear in court pro forma the next day

" Send me a line about my little boy.

" W.H.
" 10, George Street,

"Edinburgh."

"Renton Inn, Berwickshire,

[June 9, 1822].
"MY DEAR PATMORE,

"Your letter raised me for a moment from the
depths of despair, but not hearing from you yesterday
or to-day, as I hoped, I am gone back again. . . .
I grant all you say about my self- tormenting mad-
ness, but has it been without cause ? When I think
of this, and I think of it for ever (except when I
read your letters), the air I breathe stifles me. . .
I can do nothing. What is the use of all I have
done ? Is it not this thinking beyond my strength,
my feeling more than I ought about so many things,
that has withered me up, and made me a thing for
love to shrink from and wonder at ? .... My
state is that I feel I shall never lie down again at
night nor rise up of a morning in peace, nor ever
behold my little boy's face with pleasure, while I
live, unless I am restored to her favour. ... I
wander, or rather crawl, by the sea-side, and the
eternal ocean, and lasting despair, and her face are

before me Do let me know if anything

has passed : suspense is my greatest torment. Jeffrey

APPENDIX III. XC1.

(to whom I did a little unfold) came down with
ioo/., to give me time to recover, and I am going to
Renton Inn to see if I can work a little in the three
weeks before it will be over, if all goes well. Tell
Colburn to send the 'Table Talk' to him, 92, George
Street, Edinburgh, unless he is mad, and wants to
ruin me. . . . Write on the receipt of this, and
believe me yours unspeakably obliged,

W.H."

[Renton Inn, Berwickshire,

June 18, 1822.]
" MY DEAR FRIEND,

"Here I am at Renton, amid the hills and groves
which I greeted in their barrenness in winter, but
which have now put on their full green attire, that
shows lovely in this northern twilight, but speaks a
tale of sadness to this heart, widowed of its last and
/ its dearest, its only hope. For a man who writes
v .. such nonsense I write a good hand. Musing over
my only subject (Othello's occupation, alas! is gone).
I have at last hit upon a truth that, if true, explains
all, and satisfies me. You will by this time probably
know something, from having called and seen how
the land lies, that will make you a judge how far I
have stepped into madness in my conjectures. If I
am right, all engines set at work at once that punish
ungrateful woman ! Oh, lovely Renton Inn ! here I
wrote a volume of Essays; here I wrote my enamoured

XC11. APPENDIX III.

follies to her, thinking her human, and that below
was not all the fiends. ... By this time you
probably know enough, and know whether this
following solution is in rerum naturd at No. 9, S.
B. . . . Say that I shall want it [the lodging] very
little the next year, as I shall be abroad for some
months, but that I wish to keep it on, to have a
place to come to when I am in London ... If you
get a civil answer to this, take it for me, and send
me word. . . . Learn first if the great man of Pen-
maen-Mawr is still there. You may do this by
asking after my hamper of books which was in
the back parlour. . . . Tell her that I am free
and that I have had a severe illness.

"W.H.

"I would give a thousand worlds to believe her
anything but what I suppose. . . .

"P. G. Patmore, Esq.,

" 12, Greek Street, Soho, London."

[Edinburgh, June 25, 1822].

" MY DEAR AND GOOD FRIEND,

" I am afraid that I trouble you with my querulous
epistles ; but this is probably the last. To-morrow
decides my fate with respect to her\ and the next
day I expect to be a free man. There has been a
delay pro forma of ten days. In vain ! Was it not
for her, and to lay my freedom at her feet, that I

APPENDIX III. XClii.

took this step that has cost me infinite wretchedness ?
. . . . You, who have been a favourite with
women, do not know what it is to be deprived of
one's only hope, and to have it turned to a mockery
and a scorn. There is nothing in the world left that
can give me one drop of comfort that I feel more
and more. . . . The breeze does not cool me,
and tjie blue sky does not allure my eye. I gaze
only on her face like a marble image averted from
me. Ah ! the only face that ever was turned fondly
to me f ~

"""T^shall, I hope, be in town next Friday at

furthest Not till Friday week. Write,

for God's sake, and let me know the worst.

" I have no answer from her. I wish you to call
on Roscoe* in confidence, to say that I intend to
make her an offer of marriage, and that I will write
to her father the moment I am free (next Friday
week), and to ask him whether he thinks it will be to
any purpose, and what he would advise me to do.
. . . . You don't know what I suffer, or you
would not be so severe upon me. My death will, I
hope, satisfy everyone before long.

W. H."

* The gentleman who had married the sister, and was said
to be very happy in his choice.

LIBER AMORIS.

PART I.

N^A*

f

ADVERTISEMENT.

The circumstances, an outline of which is given
in these pages, happened a very short time ago to a
native of North Britain, who left his own country
early in life, in consequence of political animosities
and an ill-advised connection in marriage. It was
some years after that he formed the fatal attachment
which is the subject of the following narrative. The
whole was transcribed very carefully with his own
hand, a little before he set out for the Continent in
hopes of benefiting by a change of scene, but he
died soon after in the Netherlands it is supposed,
of disappointment preying on a sickly frame and
morbid state of mind. It was his wish that what

ADVERTISEMENT.

had been his strongest feeling while living, should
be preserved in this shape when he was no more. It
has been suggested to the friend, into whose hands
the manuscript was entrusted, that many things
(particularly in the Conversations in the first Part)
either childish or redundant, might have been
omitted ; but a promise was given that not a word
should be altered, and the pledge was held sacred.
The names and circumstances are so far disguised,
it is presumed, as to prevent any consequences result-
ing from the publication, farther than the amuse-
ment or sympathy of the reader.

THE PICTURE.

H. OH ! is it you ? I had something
to shew you I have got a picture here.
Do you know any one it's like ?

S. No, Sir.

H. Don't you think it like yourself ?

S. No : it's much handsomer than I
can pretend to be.

H. That's because you don't see your-
self with the same eyes that others do.
/ don't think it handsomer, and the ex-
pression is hardly so fine as your's some-
times is.

S. Now you flatter me. Besides, the
complexion is fair, and mine is dark.

H. Thine is pale and beautiful, my love,
not dark ! But if your colour were a little
heightened, and you wore the same dress,

2 THE PICTURE.

and ,your hah were let down over your

, shoulders, as it 13 here, it might be taken

. for a picture of* you. Look here, only

see how like it is. The forehead is like,

with that little obstinate protrusion in the

middle ; the eyebrows are like, and the

eyes are just like yours, when you look

up and say " No never ! "

S. What then, do I always say " No-
never ! " when I look up ?

H. I don't know about that I never
heard you say so but once : but that was
once too often for my peace. It was when
you told me, "you could never be mine.''
Ah ! if you are never to be mine, I shall
not long be myself. I cannot go on as I
am. My faculties leave me : I think of
nothing, I have no feeling about any thing
but thee : thy sweet image has taken pos-
session of me, haunts me, and will drive
me to distraction. Yet I could almost
wish to go mad for thy sake : for then
I might fancy that I had thy love in
return, which I cannot live without !

S. Do not, I beg, talk in that manner,

THE PICTURE. 3

but tell me what this is a picture of.

H. I hardly know ; but it is a very
small and delicate copy (painted in oil
on a gold ground) of some fine old Italian
picture, Guide's or Raphael's, but I think
Raphael's. Some say it is a Madona ;
others call it a Magdalen, and say you may
distinguish the tear upon the cheek, though
no tear is there. But it seems to me more
like Raphael's St. Cecilia, " with looks
commercing with the skies," than anything
else. See, Sarah, how beautiful it is ! Ah !
dear girl, these are the ideas I have
cherished in my heart, and in my brain ;
and I never found any thing to realize
them on earth till I met with thee, my
love ! While thou didst seem sensible of
my kindness, I was but too happy : but now
thou hast cruelly cast me off.

S. You have no reason to say so : you
are the same to me as ever.

H. That is, nothing. You are to me
every thing, and I am nothing to you. Is
it not too true ?

S. No.

4 THE PICTURE.

H. Then kiss me, my sweetest. Oh !
could you see your face now your mouth
full of suppressed sensibility, your down-
cast eyes, the soft blush upon that cheek,
you would not say the picture is not like
because it is too handsome, or because you
want complexion. Thou art heavenly-fair,
my love like her from whom the picture
was taken the idol of the painter's heart,
as thou art of mine ! Shall I make a
drawing of it, altering the dress a little, to
shew you how like it is ?

S. As you please.

THE INVITATION.

H. But I am afraid I tire you with this
prosing description of the French character
and abuse of the English ? You know
there is but one subject on which I should
ever wish to talk, if you would let me.

S. I must say, you don't seem to have a
very high opinion of this country.

H. Yes, it is the place that gave you
birth.

S. Do you like the French women
better than the English ?

H. No : though they have finer eyes,
talk better, and are better made. But they
none of them look like you. I like the
Italian women I have seen, much better
than the French : they have darker eyes,
darker hair, and the accents of their native

6 THE INVITATION.

tongue are much richer and more melodious.
But I will give you a better account of them
when I come back from Italy, if you would
like to hear it.

S. I should much. It is for that I have
sometimes had a wish for travelling abroad,
to understand something of the manners
and characters of different people.

H. My sweet girl ! I will give you the
best account I can unless you would rather
go and judge for yourself.

S. I cannot.

H. Yes, you shall go with me, and you
shall go with honour you know what I
mean.

S. You know it is not in your power to
take me so.

H. But it soon may : and if you would
consent to bear me company, I would swear
never to think of an Italian woman while I
am abroad, nor of an English one after I
return home. Thou art to me more than
thy whole sex.

S. I require no such sacrifices.

H. Is that what you thought I meant by

THE INVITATION. 7

sacrifices last night ? But sacrifices are no
sacrifices when they are repaid a thousand
fold.

S. I have no way of doing it.

H. You have not the will.

S. I must go now.

H. Stay, and hear me a little. I shall
soon be where I can no more hear thy
voice, far distant from her I love, to see
what change of climate and bright skies
will do for a sad heart. I shall perhaps
see thee no more, but I shall still think of
thee the same as ever I shall say to myself,
"Where is she now ? what is she doing ?"
But I shall hardly wish you to think of me,
unless you could do so more favourably
than I am afraid you will. Ah ! dearest
creature, I shall be " far distant from you,"
as you once said of another, but you will
not think of me as of him, " with the
sincerest affection." The smallest share of
thy tenderness would make me blest ; but
couldst thou ever love me as thou didst
him, I should feel like a God ! My face
would change to a different expression : my

8 THE INVITATION.

whole form would undergo alteration. I
was getting well, I was growing young in
the sweet proofs of your friendship : you
see how I droop and wither under your
displeasure ! Thou art divine, my love, and
canst make me either more or less than
mortal. Indeed I am thy creature, thy *
slave I only wish to live for your sake I
would gladly die for you

S. That would give me no pleasure.
But indeed you greatly over-rate my power.

H. Your power over me is that of
sovereign grace and beauty. When I am
near thee, nothing can harm me. Thou art
an angel of light, shadowing me with thy
softness. But when I let go thy hand, I
stagger on a precipice : out of thy sight
the world is dark to me and comfortless.
There is no breathing out of this house :
the air of Italy will stifle me. Go with me
and lighten it. I can know no pleasure
away from thee

"But I will come again, my love,
"An it were ten thousand mile !"

THE MESSAGE.

S. MRS. E has called for the book,

Sir.

H. Oh ! it is there. Let her wait a
minute or two. I see this is a busy-day
with you. How beautiful your arms look in
those short sleeves !

S. I do not like to wear them.

H. Then that is because you are merci-
ful, and would spare frail mortals who might
die with gazing.

S. I have no power to kill.

H. You have, you have Your charms
are irresistible as your will is inexorable. I
wish I could see you always thus. But I
would have no one else see you so. I am
jealous of all eyes but my own. I should
almost like you to wear a veil, and to be

10 THE MESSAGE.

muffled up from head to foot ; but even if
you were, and not a glimpse of you could
be seen, it would be to no purpose you
would only have to move, and you would be
admired as the most graceful creature in the
world. You smile Well, if you were to be
won by fine speeches

S. You could supply them !

H. It is however no laughing matter with
me ; thy beauty kills me daily, and I shall
think of nothing but thy charms, till the
last word trembles on my tongue, and that
will be thy name, my love the name of my
Infelice ! You will live by that name, you
rogue, fifty years after you are dead. Don't
you thank me for that ?

S. I have no such ambition, Sir. But
Mrs. E is waiting.

H. She is not in love, like me. You
look so handsome to-day, I cannot let you
go. You have got a colour.

S. But you say I look best when I am
pale.

H. When you are pale, I think so ; but
when you have a colour, I then think you

THE MESSAGE. II

still more beautiful. It is you that I
admire ; and whatever you are, I like best.

I like you as Miss L , I should like you

still more as Mrs. . I once thought you

were half-inclined to be a prude, and I
admired you as a " pensive nun, devout and
pure." I now think you are more than half
a coquet, and I like you for your roguery.
The truth is, I am in love with you, my
angel ; and whatever you are, is to me the
perfection of thy sex. I care not what thou
art, while thou art still thyself. Smile
but so, and turn my heart to what shape
you please !

S. I am afraid, Sir, Mrs. E will

think you have forgotten her.

H. I had, my charmer. But go, and
make her a sweet apology, all graceful as
thou art. One kiss ! Ah ! ought I not to
think myself the happiest of men ?

THE FLAGEOLET.

H. WHERE have you been, my love !

S. I have been down to see my aunt, Sir.

H. And I hope she has been giving you
good advice.

S. I did not go to ask her opinion about
any thing.

H. And yet you seem anxious and agi-
tated. You appear pale and dejected, as
if your refusal of me had touched your own
breast with pity. Cruel girl ! you look at
this moment heavenly- so ft, saint-like, or
resemble some graceful marble statue, in the
moon's pale ray ! Sadness only heightens
the elegance of your features. How can I
escape from you, when every new occasion,
even your cruelty and scorn, brings out some
new charm. Nay, your rejection of me, by

THE FLAGEOLET. 13

the way in which you do it, is only a new
link added to my chain. Raise those down-
cast eyes, bend as if an angel stooped, and
kiss me. . . .Ah ! enchanting little trembler !
if such is thy sweetness where thou dost not
love, what must thy love have been ? I
cannot think how any man, having the
heart of one, could go and leave it.

S. No one did, that I know of.

H. Yes, you told me yourself he left you
(though he liked you, and though he knew
Oh ! gracious God ! that you loved him)
he left you because "the pride of birth
would not permit a union." For myself, I
would leave a throne to ascend to the
heaven of thy charms. I live but for thee,
here I only wish to live again to pass all
eternity with thee. But even in another
world, I suppose you would turn from me to
seek him out, who scorned you here.

S. If the proud scorn us here, in that
place we shall all be equal.

H. Do not look so do not talk so
unless you would drive me mad. I could
worship you at this moment. Can I witness

14 THE FLAGEOLET.

such perfection, and bear to think I have
lost you for ever ? Oh ! let me hope !
You see you can mould me as you like.
You can lead me by the hand, like a little
child ; and with you my way would be like
a little child's : you could strew flowers in
my path, and pour new life and hope into
me. I should then indeed hail the return
of spring with joy, could I indulge the
faintest hope would you but let me try
to please you !

S. Nothing can alter my resolution, Sir.

H. Will you go and leave me so ?

S. It is late, and my father will be
getting impatient at my stopping so long.

H. You know he has nothing to fear for
you it is poor I that am alone in danger.
But I wanted to ask about buying you a
flageolet. Could I see that which you
have ? If it is a pretty one, it would hardly
be worth while ; but if it isn't, I thought of
bespeaking an ivory one for you. Can't
you bring up your own to shew me ?

S. Not to-night, Sir.

H. I wish you could.

THE FLAGEOLET. 15

S. I cannot but I will in the morning.
-> H. Whatever you determine, I must
submit to. Good night, and bless thee !

\_The next morning, S. brought up the tea-
kettle as usual ; and looking towards the
tea-tray, she said, " Oh ! I see my sister
has forgot the tea-pot" It was not there,
sure enough ; and tripping dozun stairs,
she came up in a minute, with the tea-pot
in one hand, and the flageolet in the other,
balanced so sweetly and gracefully. It
would have been awkward to have brought
up the flageolet in the tea-tray, and she
could not well have gone down again on
purpose to fetch it. Something therefore
was to be omitted as an excuse. Exqui-
site witch ! But do I love her the less
dearly for it ? I cannot.~]

THE CONFESSION.

H. You say you cannot love. Is there
not a prior attachment in the case ? Was
there any one else that you did like ?

S. Yes, there was another.

H. Ah ! I thought as much. Is it long
ago then ?

S. It is two years, Sir.

H. And has time made no alteration ?
Or do you still see him sometimes ?

S. No, Sir ! But he is one to whom I
feel the sincerest affection, and ever shall,
though he is far distant.

H. And did he return your regard ?

S. I had every reason to think so.

H. What then broke off your intimacy ?

S. It was the pride of birth, Sir, that
would not permit him to think of an union.

THE CONFESSION. 17

H. Was he a young man of rank, then ?

S. His connections were high.

H. And did he never attempt to persuade
you to any other step ?

S. No he had too great a regard for
me.

H. Tell me, my angel, how was it ?
Was he so very handsome ? Or was it the
fineness of his manners ?

S. It was more his manner : but I can't
tell how it was. It was chiefly my own
fault. I was foolish to suppose he could
ever think seriously of me. But he used to
make me read with him and I used to be
with him a good deal, though not much
neither and I found my affections en-
tangled before I was aware of it.

H. And did your mother and family
know of it ?

S. No I have never told any one but
you ; nor I should not have mentioned it
now, but I thought it might give you some
satisfaction.

H. Why did he go at last ?

S. We thought it better to part.
c

J8 THE CONFESSION.

H. And do you correspond ?

S. No, Sir. But perhaps I may see him
again some time or other, though it will
be only in the way of friendship.

H. My God ! what a heart is thine, to
live for years upon that bare hope !

S. 1 did not wish to live always, Sir I
wished to die for a long time after, till I
thought it not right ; and since then I
have endeavoured to be as resigned as I can.

H. And do you think the impression will
never wear out ?

S. Not if I can judge from my feelings
hitherto. It is now some time since, and
and I find no difference.

H. May God for ever bless you ! How
can I thank you for your condescension in
letting me know your sweet sentiments ?
You have changed my esteem into adora-
tion. Never can I harbour a thought of ill
in thee again.

S. Indeed, Sir, I wish for your good
opinion and your friendship.

H. And can you return them ?

S. Yes.

THE CONFESSION. 19

H. And nothing more ?

S. No, Sir.

H. You are an angel, and I will spend
my life, if you will let me, in paying you
the homage that my heart feels towards you.

THE QUARREL.

H. You are angry with me ?

S. Have I not reason ?

H. I hope you have ; for I would give
the world to believe my suspicions unjust.
But, oh ! my God ! after what I have
thought of you and felt towards you, as
little less than an angel, to have but a doubt
cross my mind for an instant that you were
what I dare not name a common lodging-
house decoy, a kissing convenience, that
your lips were as common as the stairs

S. Let me go, Sir !

H. Nay prove to me that you are not
so, and I will fall down and worship you.
You were the only creature that ever seemed
to love me ; and to have my hopes, and all
my fondness for you, thus turned to a

THE QUARREL. 21

mockery it is too much ! Tell me why
you have deceived me, and singled me out
as your victim ?

S. I never have, Sir. I always said I
could not love.

H. There is a difference between love
and making me a laughing-stock. Yet what
else could be the meaning of your little
sister's running out to you, and saying, "He
thought I did not see him ! " when I had
followed you into the other room ? Is it a
joke upon me that I make free with you ?
Or is not the joke rather against her sister,
unless you make my courtship of you a jest
to the whole house ? Indeed I do not well
see how you can come and stay with me as
you do, by the hour together, and day after
day, as openly as you do, unless you give it
some such turn with your family. Or do
you deceive them as well as me ?

S. I deceive no one, Sir. But my sister
Betsey was always watching and listening

when Mr. M wj.s courting my eldest

sister, till he was obliged to complain of it.

H. That I can understand, but not the

22 THE QUARREL.

other. You may remember, when your
servant Maria looked in and found you
sitting in my lap one day, and I was afraid
she might tell your mother, you said " You
did not care, for you had no secrets from
your mother." This seemed to me odd at
the time, but I thought no more of it, till
other things brought it to my mind. Am I
to suppose, then, that you are acting a part,
a vile part, all this time, and that you come
up here, and stay as long as I like, that you
sit on my knee and put your arms round my
neck, and feed me with kisses, and let me
take other liberties with you, and that for a
year together ; and that you do all this not
out of love, or liking, or regard, but go
through your regular task, like some young
witch, without one natural feeling, to shew
your cleverness, and get a few presents out
of me, and go down into the kitchen to
make a fine laugh of it ? There is some-
thing monstrous in it, that I cannot believe
of you.

S. Sir, you have no right to harass my
feelings in the manner you do. I have

THE QUARREL. 23

never made a jest of you to any one, but
always felt and expressed the greatest
esteem for you. You have no ground for
complaint in my conduct ; and I cannot
help what Betsey or others do. I have
always been consistent from the first. I
told you my regard could amount to no
more than friendship.

H. Nay, Sarah, it was more than half a
year before I knew that there was an insur-
mountable obstacle in the way. You say
your regard is merely friendship, and that
you are sorry I have ever felt any thing
more for you. Yet the first time I ever
asked you, you let me kiss you : the first
time I ever saw you, as you went out of the
room, you turned full round at the door,
with that inimitable grace with which you
do every thing, and fixed your eyes full
upon me, as much as to say, " Is he
caught ? " that very week you sat upon my
knee, twined your arms round me, caressed
me with every mark of tenderness consis-
tent with modesty ; and I have not got
much farther since. Now if you did all

24 THE QUARREL.

this with me, a perfect stranger to you, and
without any particular liking to me, must I
not conclude you do so as a matter of
course with every one ? Or if you do not
do so with others, it was because you took
a liking to me for some reason or other.

S. It was gratitude, Sir, for different ob-
ligations.

H. If you mean by obligations the pre-
sents I made you, I had given you none the
first day I came. You do not consider
yourself obliged to every one who asks you
for a kiss ?

S. No, Sir.

H. I should not have thought any thing
of it in any one but you. But you seemed
so reserved and modest, so soft, so timid,
you spoke so low, you looked so innocent
I thought it impossible you could deceive
me. Whatever favors you granted must
proceed from pure regard. No betrothed
virgin ever gave the object of her choice
kisses, caresses more modest or more be-
witching than those you have given me a
thousand and a thousand times. Could I

THE QUARREL. 25

have thought I should ever live to believe
them an inhuman mockery of one who had
the sincerest regard for you ? Do you think
they will not now turn to rank poison in my
veins, and kill me, soul and body ? You
say it is friendship but if this is friendship,
I'll forswear love. Ah ! Sarah ! it must be
something more or less than friendship. If
your caresses are sincere, they shew fond-
ness if they are not, I must be more than
indifferent to you. Indeed you once let
some words drop, as if I were out of the
question in such matters, and you could
trifle with me with impunity. Yet you
complain at other times that no one ever
took such liberties with you as I have done.
I remember once in particular your saying,
as you went out at the door in anger " I
had an attachment before, but that person
never attempted any thing of the kind."
Good God ! How did I dwell on that word
before, thinking it implied an attachment to
rne also ; but you have since disclaimed
any such meaning. You say you have
never professed more than esteem. Yet

26 THE QUARREL.

once, when you were sitting in your old
place, on my knee, embracing and fondly
embraced, and I asked you if you could not
love, you made answer, " I could easily say
so, whether I did or not YOU SHOULD
JUDGE BY MY ACTIONS ! "And another time,
when you were in the same posture, and I
reproached you with indifference, you re-
plied in these words, " Do I SEEM INDIFF-
ERENT?" Was I to blame after this to
indulge my passion for the loveliest of her
sex ? Or what can I think ?

S. I am no prude, Sir.

H. Yet you might be taken for one. So
your mother said, "It was hard if you might
not indulge in a little levity." She has
strange notions of levity. But levity, my
dear, is quite out of character in you. Your
ordinary walk is as if you were performing
some religious ceremony : you come up to
my table of a morning, when you merely
bring in the tea-things, as if you were ad-
vancing to the altar. You move in minuet-
time : you measure every step, as if you were
afraid of offending in the smallest things.

THE QUARREL. 2J

I never heard your approach on the stairs,
but by a sort of hushed silence. When you
enter the room, the Graces wait on you, and
Love waves round your person in gentle
undulations, breathing balm into the soul !
By Heaven, you are an angel ! You look
like one at this instant ! Do I not adore
you and have I merited this return ?

S. I have repeatedly answered that ques-
tion. You sit and fancy things out of your
own head, and then lay them to my charge.
There is not a word of truth in your sus-
picions.

H. Did I not overhear the conversation
down-stairs last night, to which you were a
party ? Shall I repeat it ?

S. I had rather not hear it !

H. Or what am I to think of this story
of the footman ?

S. It is false, Sir, I never did any thing
of the sort.

H. Nay, when I told your mother I
wished she would'nt * * * * # # * * * *
********** ( as i heard she did) she
said " Oh, there's nothing in that, for Sarah

28 THE QUARREL.

very often ***** * * * * * * and
your doing so before company is only a
trifling addition to the sport.

S. I'll call my mother, Sir, and she shall
contradict you.

H. Then she'll contradict herself. But
did not you boast you were " very persever-
ing in your resistance to gay young men,"
and had been "several times obliged to
ring the bell ? " Did you always ring it ?
Or did you get into these dilemmas that
made it necessary, merely by the demureness
of your looks and ways ? Or had nothing
else passed ? Or have you two characters,
one that you palm off upon me, and another,
your natural one, that you resume when you
get out of the room, like an actress who
throws aside her artificial 'part behind the
scenes ? Did you not, when I was courting
you on the staircase the first night Mr.

C came, beg me to desist, for if the

new lodger heard us, he'd take you for a
light character ? Was that all ? Were you
only afraid of being taken for a light char-
acter? Oh! Sarah!

THE QUARREL. 29

S. I'll stay and hear this no longer.

H. Yes, one word more. Did you not
love another ?

S. Yes, and ever shall most sincerely.

H. Then, that is my only hope. If you
could feel this sentiment for him, you can-
not be what you seem to me of late. But
there is another thing I had to say be
what you will, I love you to distraction !
You are the only woman that ever made me
think she loved me, and that feeling was so
new to me, and so delicious, that it "will
never from my heart." Thou wert to me a
little tender flower, blooming in the wilder-
ness of my life ; and though thou should'st
turn out a weed, I'll not fling thee from me,
while I can help it. Wert thou all that I
dread to think wert thou a wretched wan-
derer in the street, covered with rags, dis-
ease, and infamy, I'd clasp thee to my
bosom, and live and die with thee, my love.
Kiss me, thou little sorceress !

S. NEVER !

H. Then go : but remember I cannot
live without you nor I will not.

THE RECONCILIATION.

H. I HAVE then lost your friendship ?

S. Nothing tends more to alienate friend-
ship than insult.

H. The words I uttered hurt me more
than they did you.

S. It was not words merely, but actions
as well.

H. Nothing I can say or do can ever alter
my fondness for you Ah, Sarah ! I am un-
worthy of your love : I hardly dare ask for
your pity ; but oh ! save me save me from
your scorn : I cannot bear it it withers me
like lightning.

S. I bear no malice, Sir ; but my brother,
who would scorn to tell a lie for his sister,
can bear witness for me that there was no
truth in what you were told.

THE RECONCILIATION. 31

H. I believe it ; or there is no truth in
woman. It is enough for me to know that
you do not return my regard ; it would
be too much for me to think that you did
not deserve it. But cannot you forgive the
agony of the moment ?

S. I can forgive ; but it is not easy to
forget some things !

H. Nay, my sweet Sarah (frown if you
will, I can bear your resentment for my ill
behaviour, it is only your scorn and indif-
ference that harrow up my soul) but I was
going to ask, if you had been engaged
to be married to any one, and the day was
fixed, and he had heard ^what I did, whether
he could have felt any true regard for the
character of his bride, his wife, if he had
not been hurt and alarmed as I was ?

S. I believe, actual contracts of marriage
have sometimes been broken off by unjust
suspicions.

H. Or had it been your old friend, what
do you think he would have said in my case ?

S. He would never have listened to any
thing of the sort.

32 THE RECONCILIATION.

H. He had greater reasons for confidence
than I have. But it is your repeated cruel
rejection of me that drives me almost to
madness. Tell me, love, is there not, be-
sides your attachment to him, a repugnance
to me ?

S. No, none whatever.

H. I fear there is an original dislike,
which no efforts of mine can overcome.

S. It is not you it is my feelings with
respect to another, which are unalterable.

H. And yet you have no hope of ever
being his ? And yet you accuse me of
being romantic in my sentiments.

S. I have indeed long ceased to hope ;
but yet 1 sometimes hope against hope.

H, My love ! were it in my power, thy
hopes should be fulfilled to-morrow. Next
to my own, there is nothing that could give
me so much satisfaction as to see thine
realized ! Do I not love thee, when I can
feel such an interest in thy love for another ?
It was that which first wedded my very soul
to you. I would give worlds for a share in
a heart so rich in pure affection !

THE RECONCILIATION. 33

S. And yet I did not tell you of the cir-
cumstance to raise myself in your opinion.

H. You are a sublime little thing ! And
yet, as you have no prospects there, I
cannot help thinking, the best thing would
be to do as I have said.

S. I would never marry a man I did not
love beyond all the world.

H. I should be satisfied with less than
that with the love, or regard, or whatever
you call it, you have shown me before mar-
riage, if that has only been sincere. You
would hardly like me less afterwards.

S. Endearments would, I should think,
increase regard, where there was love before-
hand ; but that is not exactly my case.

H. But I think you would be happier than
you are at present. You take pleasure in
my conversation, and you say you have an
esteem for me ; and it is upon this, after
the honey-moon, that marriage chiefly turns.

S. Do you think there is no pleasure in
a single life ?

H. Do you mean on account of its
liberty ?

34 THE RECONCILIATION.

S. No, but I feel that forced duty is no
duty. I have high ideas of the married
state !

H. Higher than of the maiden state ?

S. I understand you, Sir.

H. I meant nothing ; but you have some-
times spoken of any serious attachment as
a tie upon you. It is not that you prefer
flirting with "gay young men" to becoming
a mere dull domestic wife ?

S. You have no right to throw out such
insinuations : for though I am but a trades-
man's daughter, I have as nice a sense of
honour as any one can have.

H. Talk of a tradesman's daughter !
you would ennoble any family, thou glorious
girl, by true nobility of mind.

S. Oh! Sir, you flatter -me. I know my
own inferiority to most.

H. To none ; there is no one above
thee, man nor woman either. You are
above your situation, which is not fit for you.

S. I am contented with my lot, and do
my duty as cheerfully as I can.

H. Have you not told me your spirits

THE RECONCILIATION. 35

grow worse every year ?

S. Not on that account : but some dis-
appointments are hard to bear up against.

H. If you talk about that, you'll unman
me. But tell me, my love, I have thought
of it as something that might account for
some circumstances ; that is, as a mere pos-
sibility. But tell me, there was not a like-
ness between me and your old lover that
struck you at first sight ? Was there ?

S. No, Sir, none.

H. Well, I didn't think it likely there
should.

S. But there was a likeness.

H. To whom ?

S. To that little image ! (looking intently
on a small bronze figure of Buonaparte on the
mantle-piece.)

H. What, do you mean to Buonaparte ?

S. Yes, all but the nose was just like.

II. And was his figure the same ?

S. He was taller !

[/ got up and gave her the image, and told
her it was her^s by every right that was
sacred. She refused at first to take so

36 THE RECONCILIATION.

valuable a curiosity, and said she would
keep it for me. But I pressed it eagerly,
and she took it. She immediately came
and sat down, and put her arm round my
neck, and kissed me, and I said "Is it not
plain we are the best friends in the world,
since we are always so glad to make it
up?" And then I added "How odd it
was that the God of my idolatry should
turn out to be like her Idol, and said it
was no wonder that the same face which
awed the world should conquer the sweetest
creature in it !" How I loved her at that
moment ! Is it possible that the wretch
who writes this could ever have been so
blest ! Heavenly delicious creature ! Can
I live without her ? Oh ! no never
never.

"What is this world? What ask en men to have,
" Now with his love, now in the cold grave,
" Alone withouten any compagnie ! "

Let me but see her again ! She cannot
hate the man who loves her as I do.~\

LETTERS TO THE SAME.

Feb. 1822.

You will scold me for this, and ask me
if this is keeping my promise to mind my
work. One half of it was to think of Sarah :
and besides, I do not neglect my work
either, I assure you. I regularly do ten
pages a day, which mounts up to thirty
guineas' worth a week, so that you see I
should grow rich at this rate, if I could
keep on so ; and I could keep on so, If I had
you with me to encourage me with your
sweet smiles, and share my lot. The Ber-
wick smacks sail twice a week, and the
wind sits fair. When I think of the thous-
and endearing caresses that have passed
between us, I do not wonder at the strong

38 LETTERS TO THE SAME.

attachment that draws me to you ; but I
am sorry for my own want of power to
please. I hear the wind sigh through the
lattice, and keep repeating over and over to
myself two lines of Lord Bryon's Tragedy

" So shalt thou find me ever at thy side
Here and hereafter, if the last may be "

applying them to thee, my love, and think-
ing whether I shall ever see thee again.
Perhaps not for some years at least till
both thou and I are old and then, when
all else have forsaken thee, I will creep to
thee, and die in thine arms. You once
made me believe I was not hated by her I
loved ; and for that sensation, so delicious
was it, though but a mockery and a dream,
I owe you more than I can ever pay. I
thought to have dried up my tears for ever,
the day I left you ; but as I write this, they
stream again. If they did not, I think my
heart would burst. I walk out here of an
afternoon, and hear the notes of the thrush,
that come up from a sheltered valley below,
welcome in the spring ; but they do not melt

LETTERS TO THE SAME. 39

my heart as they used : it is grown cold
and dead. As you say, it will one day be
colder. Forgive what I have written above ;
I did not intend it : but you were once my
little all, and I cannot bear the thought of
having lost you for ever, I fear through my
own fault. Has any one called ? Do not
send any letters that come. I should like
you and your mother (if agreeable) to go
and see Mr. Kean in Othello, and Miss
Stephens in Love in a Village. If you will,

I will write to Mr. T , to send you

tickets. Has Mr. P called ? I think I

must send to him for the picture to kiss and
talk to. Kiss me, my best-beloved. Ah !
if you can never be mine, still let me be
your proud and happy slave.

H.

TO THE SAME.

March, 1822.

You will be glad to learn I have done
my work a volume in less than a month.
This is one reason why I am better than
when I came, and another is, I have had two
letters from Sarah. I am pleased I have got
through this job, as I was afraid I might
lose reputation by it (which I can little afford
to lose) and besides, I am more anxious to
do well now, as I wish you to hear me well
spoken of. I walk out of an afternoon, and
hear the birds sing as I told you, and think,
if I had you hanging on my arm, and that
for life, how happy I should be happier
than I ever hoped to be, or had any con-
ception of till I knew you. " But that can

TO THE SAME. 41

never be " I hear you answer in a soft, low
murmur. Well, let me dream of it some-
times I am not happy too often, except
when that favorite note, the harbinger of
spring, recalling the hopes of my youth,
whispers thy name and peace together in
my ear. I was reading something about
Mr. Macready to-day, and this put me in
mind of that delicious night, when I went
with your mother and you to see Romeo
and Juliet. Can I forget it for a moment
your sweet modest looks, your infinite pro-
priety of behaviour, all your sweet winning
ways your hesitating about taking my arm
as we came out till your mother did your
laughing about nearly losing your cloak
your stepping into the coach without my
being able to make the slightest discovery
and oh ! my sitting down beside you
there, you whom I had loved so long, so
well, and your assuring me I had not less-
ened your pleasure at the play by being
with you, and giving me your dear hand to
press in mine ! I thought I was in heaven
that slender exquisitely turned form con-

4^ TO THE SAME.

tained my all of heaven upon earth ; and
as I folded you yes, you, my own best
Sarah, to my bosom, there was, as you say,
a tie between us you did seem to me, for
those few short moments, to be mine in all
truth and honour and sacredness Oh !
that we could be always so Do not mock
me, for I am a very child in love. I ought
to beg pardon for behaving so ill afterwards,
but I hope the little image made it up between
us, &c.

\_To this letter I have received no answer, not
a line. The rolling years of eternity will
never fill up that blank. Where shall I
be ? What am I? Or where have I been ?~\

WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF
ENDYMION.

I WANT a hand to guide me, an eye to
cheer me, a bosom to repose on ; all which
I shall never have, but shall stagger into
my grave, old before my time, unloved and
unlovely, unless S. L. keeps her faith with
me.

But by her dove's eyes and serpent-
shape, I think she does not hate me ; by
her smooth forehead and her crested hair,
I own I love her ; by her soft looks and
queen-like grace (which men might fall
down and worship) I swear to live and die
for her !

A PROPOSAL OF LOVE.

(Given to her in our early acquaintance.)

" Oh ! if I thought it could be in a woman

(As, if it can, I will presume in you)

To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love,

To keep her constancy in plight and youth,

Outliving beauties outward with a mind

That doth renew swifter than blood decays :

Or that persuasion could but thus convince me,

That my integrity and truth to you

Might be confronted with the match and weight

Of such a winnowed purity in love

How were I then uplifted ! B,ut, alas,

I am as true as truth's simplicity,

And simpler than the infancy of truth."

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA.

LIBER AMORIS.
PART II.

LETTERS TO C. P , ESQ.

Bees- Inn.

MY GOOD FRIEND,

Here I am in Scotland (and shall have
been here three weeks, next Monday) as I
may say, on my probation. This is a lone
inn, but on a great scale, thirty miles from
Edinburgh. It is situated on a rising
ground (a mark for all the winds, which
blow here incessantly) there is a woody
hill opposite, with a winding valley below,
and the London road stretches out on
either side. You may guess which way I
oftenest walk. I have written two letters to
S. L. and got one cold, prudish answer,
beginning Sir, and ending From your" s truly,
with Best respects from herself and relations.

48 LETTER I.

I was going to give in, but have returned an
answer, which I think is a touch-stone. I
send it you on the other side to keep as a
curiosity, in case she kills me by her
exquisite rejoinder. I am convinced from
the profound contemplations I have had on
the subject here and coming along, that I
am on a wrong scent. We, had a famous
parting-scene, a complete quarrel and then
a reconciliation, in which she did beguile
me of my tears, but the deuce a one did
she shed. What do you think? She cajoled
me out of my little Buonaparte as cleverly
as possible, in manner and form following.
She was shy the Saturday and Sunday (the
day of my departure) so I got in dudgeon,
and began to rip up grievances. I asked
her how she came to admit me to such
extreme familiarities, the first week I
entered the house. "If she had no par-
ticular regard for me, she must do so (or
more) with every one : if she had a liking
to me from the first, why refuse me with
scorn and wilfulness ? " If you had seen
how she flounced, and looked, and went to

LETTER I. 49

the door, saying " She was obliged to me
for letting her know the opinion I had
always entertained of her" then I said,
" Sarah ! " and she came back and took my
hand, and fixed her eyes on the mantle-
piece (she must have been invoking her
idol then if I thought so, I could devour
her, the darling but I doubt her) So I
said " There is one thing that has occurred
to me sometimes as possible, to account
for your conduct to me at first there wasn't
a likeness, was there, to your old friend ? "
She answered " No, none but there was a
likeness " I asked, to what ? She said
"To that little image!" I said, "Do you
mean Buonaparte ? " She said, " Yes, all
but the nose." "And the figure?" "He
was taller." I could not stand this. So I
got up and took it, and gave it her, and
after some reluctance, she consented to
"keep it for me." What will you bet me
that it wasn't all a trick ? I'll tell you why
I suspect it, besides being fairly out of my
wits about her. I had told her mother half
an hour before, that I should take this
E

5O LETTER I.

image and leave it at Mrs. B.'s, for that I
didn't wish to leave any thing behind me
that must bring me back again. Then up
she comes and starts a likeness to her lover :
she knew I should give it her on the spot
" No, she would keep it for me ! " So I
must come back for it. Whether art or
nature, it is sublime. I told her I should
write and telty5iTs5, and that I parted from
her, confiding, adoring ! She is beyond me,
that's certain. Do go and see her, and
desire her not to give my present address to
a single soul, and learn if the lodging is let,
and to whom. My letter to her is as
follows. If she shews the least remorse at-
it, I'll be hanged, though it might move a
stone, I modestly think. (See before, Part
I. page. tf).

N.B. I have begun a book of our con-
versations (I mean mine and the statue's)
which I call LIBER AMORIS. I was de-
tained at Stamford and found myself dull,
and could hit upon no other way of employ-
ing my time so agreeably.

LETTER II.

DEAR P-

Here without loss of time, in order that I
may have vour opinion upon it, i{ little YES
and No'sjanswer to my last,
"si/,

" I should not have disregarded your in-
junction not to send you any more letters
that might come to you, had I not promised
the Gentleman who left the enclosed to
forward it the earliest opportunity, as he
said it was of consequence. Mr. P called
the day after you left town. My mother
and myself are much obliged by your kind
offer of tickets to the play, but must decline
accepting it. My family send their best
respects, in which they are joined by
Your's truly,

S. L."

The deuce a bit more is there of it. If

52 LETTER II.

you can make any thing out of it (or any
body else) I'll be hanged. You are to
understand, this comes in a frank, the
second I have received from her, with a
name I can't make out, and she won't tell
me, though I asked her, where she got
franks, as also whether the lodgings were
let, to neither of which a word of answer.
# * * # is the name on the frank : see if you
can decypher it by a Red-book. I suspect
her grievously of being an arrant jilt, to say
no more yet I love her dearly. Do you
know I'm going to write to the sweet rogue
presently, having a whole evening to myself
in advance of my work ? Now mark,
before you set about your exposition of the
new Apocalypse of the New Calypso, the
only thing to be endured in the above letter
is the date. It was written the very day
after she received mine. By this she seems
willing to lose no time in receiving these
letters "of such sweet breath composed."
If I thought so but I wait for your reply.
\ After all, what is there in her but a pretty
figure, and that you can't get a word out of

LETTER II. 53

Her's is the Fabian method of making
love and conquests. What do you suppose
she said the night before I left her ?

" H. Could you not come and live with
me as a friend ?

S. I don't know : and yet it would be of
no use if I did, you would always be hanker-
ing after what could never be ! "

I asked her if she would do so at once
the very next day ? And what do you guess
was her answer "Do you think it would
be prudent?" As I didn't proceed to extre-
mities on the spot, she began to look grave,
and declare off. " Would she live with me
in her own house to be with me alt day as
dear friends, if nothing more, to sit and
read and talk with me?" "She would
make no promises, but I should find her the
same." "Would she go to the play with
me sometimes, and let it be understood that
I was paying my addresses to her ?" " She
could not, as a habit her father was rather
strict, and would object." Now what am I
to think of all this ? Am I mad or a fool ?
Answer me to that, Master Brook ! You are
a philosopher.

LETTER III.

DEAR FRIEND,

I ought to have written to you before ;
but since I received your letter, I have been
in a sort of purgatory, and what is worse, I
see no prospect of getting out of it. I
would put an end to my torments at once ;
but I am as great a coward as I have been
a dupe. Do you know I have not had a
word of answer from her since ! What can
be the reason ? Is she offended at my
letting you know she wrote to me, or is it
some new affair ? I wrote to her in the
tenderest, most respectful manner, poured
my soul at her feet, and this is the return
she makes me ! Can you account for it,
except on the admission of my worst doubts
concerning her ? Oh God ! can I bear

LETTER III. 55

after all to think of her so, or that I am
scorned and made a sport of by the creature
to whom I had given my whole heart ?
Thus has it been with me all my life ; and
so will it be to the end of it ! If you
should learn any thing, good or bad, tell
me, I conjure you : I can bear any thing
but this cruel suspense. If I knew she
was a mere abandoned creature, I should
try to forget her ; but till I do know this,
nothing can tear me from her, I have drank
in poison from her lips too long alas !
mine do not poison again. I sit and indulge
my grief by the hour together ; my weak-
ness grows upon me ; and I have no hope
left, unless I could lose my senses quite.
Do you know I think I should like this ?
To forget, ah ! to forget there would be
something in that to change to an ideot
for some few years, and then to wake up a
poor wretched old man, to recollect my
misery as past, and die ! Yet, oh ! with
her, only a little while ago, I had different
hopes, forfeited for nothing that I know of !

56 LETTER III.

solation on the subject of my tormentor,
pray do. The pain I suffer wears me out
daily. I write this on the supposition that

Mrs. may still come here, and that I may

be detained some weeks longer. Direct to
me at the Post-office ; and if I return to
town directly as I fear, I will leave word
for them to forward the letter to me in
London not at my old lodgings. I will
not go back there : yet how can I breathe
away from her ? Her hatred of me must
be great, since my love of her could not
I overcome it ! I have finished the book of
my conversations with her, which I told you
S of: if I am not mistaken, you will think
it very nice reading.

Your's ever.

Have you read Sardanapalus ? How like
the little Greek slave, Myrrha, is to her !

LETTER IV.
(Written in the Winter}.

MY GOOD FRIEND,

I received your letter this morning, and I
kiss the rod not only with submission, but
gratitude. Your reproofs of me and your
defences of her are the only things that
save my soul from perdition. She is my
heart's idol ; and believe me those words of
yours applied to the dear saint " To lip a
chaste one and suppose her wanton" were
balm and rapture to me. I have lipped her,
God knows how often, and oh ! is it even
possible that she is chaste, and that she has
bestowed her loved "endearments" on me
(her own sweet word) out of true regard ?
That thought, out of the lowest depths of

58 LETTER IV.

despair, would at any time make me strike
my forehead against the stars. Could I but
think the love "honest," I am proof against
all hazards. She by her silence makes my
dark hour ; and you by your encouragements
dissipate it for twenty-four hours. Another

thing has brought me to life. Mrs. is

actually on her way here about the divorce.
Should this unpleasant business (which has
been so long talked of) succeed, and I
should become free, do you think S. L. will

agree to change her name to ? If she

will, she shall ; and to call her so to you or
to hear her called so by others, would be
music to my ears, such as they never drank
in. Do you think if she knew how I love
her, my depressions and my altitudes, my
wanderings and my constancy, it would not
move her ? She knows it all ; and if she is
not an incorrigible, she loves me, or regards
me with a feeling next to love. I don't
believe that any woman was ever courted
more passionately than she has been by me.
y* As Rousseau said of Madame d'Houptot
\ (forgive the allusion) my heart has found

LETTER IV. 59

a tongue in speaking to her, and I have
talked to her the divine language of love.
Yet she says, she is insensible to it. Am
I to believe her or you ? You for I wish
it and wish it to madness, now that I am
like to be free, and to have it in my power
to say to her without a possibility of sus-
picion, " Sarah, will you be mine ?" When
I sometimes think of the time I first saw
the sweet apparition, August 16, 1820, and
that possibly she may be my bride before
that day two years, it makes me dizzy with
incredible joy and love of her. Write soon.

LETTER V.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I read your answer this morning with
gratitude. I have felt somewhat easier since.
It shewed your interest in my vexations, and
also that you know nothing worse than I do.
I cannot describe the weakness of mind to
which she has reduced me. This state of
suspense is like hanging in the air by a sin-
gle thread that exhausts all your strength to
keep hold of it ; and yet if that fails you, you
have nothing in the world else left to trust
to. I am come back to Edinburgh about

this cursed business, and Mrs. is coming

from Montrose next week. How it will end,
I can't say ; and don't care, except as it re-
gards the other affair. I should, I confess,
like to have it in my power to make her the

LETTER V. 6 I

offer direct and unequivocal, to see how she'd
receive it. It would be worth something at
any rate to see her superfine airs upon the
occasion ; and if she should take it into her
head to turn round her sweet neck, drop her
eye-lids, and say " Yes, I will be yours !"
why then, " treason domestic, foreign levy,
nothing could touch me further." By Hea^
ven ! I doat on her. The truth is, I never had x \
any pleasure, like love, with any one but her.^/
Then how can I bear to part with her ? Do
you know I like to think of her best in her
morning-gown and mob-cap it is so she has
oftenest come into my room and enchanted
me ! She was once ill, pale, and had lost
all her freshness. I only adored her the more
for it, and fell in love with the decay of her
beauty. I could devour the little witch.
If she had a plague-spot on her, I could
touch the infection : if she was in a burning
fever, I could kiss her, and drink death as I
have drank life from her lips. When I
press her hand, I enjoy perfect happiness
and contentment of soul. It is not what she
says or what she does it is herself that I

62 LETTER V.

love. To be with her is to be at peace. I
have no other wish or desire. The air about
her is serene, blissful ; and he who breathes
it is like one of the Gods ! So that I can
but have her with me always, I care for
nothing more. I never could tire of her
sweetness ; I feel that I could grow to her,
body and soul ? My heart, my heart is her's.

LETTER VI.

( Written in May).

DEAR P-

What have I suffered since I parted with
you ! A raging fire is in my heart and in my
brain, that never quits me. The steam-boat
(which I foolishly ventured on board) seems
a prison-house, a sort of spectre-ship, moving
on through an infernal lake, without wind or
tide, by some necromantic power the
splashing of the waves, the noise of the en-
gine gives me no rest, night or day no tree,
no natural object varies the scene but the
abyss is before me, and all my peace lies
weltering in it ! I feel the eternity of pun-
ishment in this life ; for I see no end of my
woes. The people about me are ill, uncom-

64 LETTER VI.

fortable, wretched enough, many of them
but to-morrow or next day, they reach the
place of their destination, and all will be new
and delightful. To me it will be the same.
I can neither escape from her, nor from my-
self. All is endurable where there is a
limit : but I have nothing but the blackness
and the fiendishness of scorn around me
mocked by her (the false one) in whom I
placed my hope, and who hardens herself
against me ! I believe you thought me quite
gay, vain, insolent, half mad, the night I left
the house no tongue can tell the heaviness
of heart I felt at that moment. No footsteps
ever fell more slow, more sad than mine ; for
every step bore me farther from her, with
whom my soul and every thought lingered.
I had parted with her in anger, and each had
spoken words of high disdain, not soon to
be forgiven. Should I ever behold her
again ? Where go to live and die far from
her ? In her sight there was Elysium ; her
smile was heaven ; her voice was enchant-
ment ; the air of love waved round her,
breathing balm into my heart: for a little

LETTER VI. 65

while I had sat with the Gods at their
golden tables, I had tasted of all earth's
bliss, " both living and loving ! " But now
Paradise barred its doors against me ; I was
driven from her presence, where rosy blushes
and delicious sighs and all soft wishes dwelt,
the outcast of nature and the scoff of love ! I
thought of the time when I was a little happy
careless child, of my father's house, of my
early lessons, of my brother's picture of me
when a boy, of all that had since happened
to me, and of the waste of years to come
I stopped, faultered, and was going to turn
back once more to make a longer truce with
wretchedness and patch up a hollow league
with love, when the recollection of her words
" I always told you I had no affection for
you " steeled my resolution, and I deter-
mined to proceed. You see by this she
always hated me, and only played with my
credulity till she could find some one to sup-
ply the place of her unalterable attachment
to the little image. ******! am a
little, a very little better to-day. Would it
were quietly over ; and that this misshapen

F

C

66 LETTER VI.

form (made to be mocked) were hid out of
"the sight of cold, sullen eyes ! The people
about me even take notice of my dumb de-
spair, and pity me. What is to be done ? I
cannot forget her; and I can find no other
like what she seemed. I should wish you to
call, if you can make an excuse, and see
whether or no she is quite marble whether
I may go back again at my return, and whe-
ther she will see me and talk to me some-
times as an old friend. Suppose you were

to call on M from me, and ask him

what his impression is that I ought to do.
But do as you think best. Pardon, pardon.

P.S. I send this from Scarborough, where
the vessel stops for a few minutes. I scarcely
know what I should have - done, but for this
relief to my feelings.

LETTER VII.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

The important step is taken, and I am
virtually a free man. * * * What had I
better do in these circumstances ? I dare
not write to her, I dare not write to her
father, or else I would. She has shot me
through with poisoned arrows, and I think
another " winged wound " would finish me.
It is a pleasant sort of balm (as you express
it) she has left in my heart ! One thing I
agree with you in, it will remain there for
ever ; but yet not very long. It festers, and
consumes me. If it were not for my little
boy, whose face I see struck blank at the
news, looking through the world for pity
and meeting with contempt instead, I should
soon, I fear, settle the question by my death.

68 LETTER VII.

That recollection is the only thought that
brings my wandering reason to an anchor ;
that stirs the smallest interest in me ; or
gives me fortitude to bear up against what
I am doomed to feel for the ungrateful.
Otherwise, I am dead to every thing but
the sense of what I have lost. She was my
life it is gone from me, and I am grown
spectral ! If I find myself in a place I am
acquainted with, it reminds me of her, of
the way in which I thought of her,

" and carved on every tree

The soft, the fair, the inexpressive she ! "

If it is a place that is new to me, it is de-
solate, barren of all interest ; for nothing
touches me but what has a reference to her.
If the clock strikes, the sound jars me ; a
million of hours will not bring back peace
to my breast. The light startles me ; the
darkness terrifies me. I seem falling into a
pit, without a hand to help me. She has
deceived me, and the earth fails from under
my feet : no object in nature is substantial,
real, but false and hollow, like her faith on
which I built my trust. She came (I knew

LETTER VII. 69

not how) and sat by my side and was folded
in my arms, a vision of love and joy, as if
she had dropped from the Heavens to bless
me by some especial dispensation of a fa-
vouring Providence, and make me amends
for all ; and now without any fault of mine
but too much fondness, she has vanished
from me, and I am left to perish. My heart
is torn out of me, with every feeling for .
which I wished to live. The whole is like a
dream, an effect of enchantment ; it tor-
ments me, and it drives me mad. I lie down
with it ; I rise up with it ; and see no chance
of repose. I grasp at a shadow, I try to
undo the past, and weep with rage and pity
over my own weakness and misery. I spared
her again and again (fool that I was) think-
ing what she allowed from me was love,
friendship, sweetness, not wantonness. How
could I doubt it, looking in her face, and
hearing her words, like sighs breathed from
the gentlest of all bosoms ? I had hopes,
I had prospects to come, the flattery of
something like fame, a pleasure in writing,
health even would have come back with her

70 LETTER VII.

smile she has blighted all, turned all to
poison and childish tears. Yet the barbed
arrow is in my heart I can neither endure
it, nor draw it out ; for with it flows my
life's-blood. I had conversed too long with
abstracted truth to trust myself with the
immortal thoughts of love. That S. L.
might have been mine, and now never can
' these are the two sole propositions that
forever stare me in the face, and look
ghastly in at my poor brain. I am in

9 some sense proud that I can feel this dread-
ful passion it gives me a kind of rank
in the kingdom of love but I could have
wished it had been for an object that at
least could have understood its value and
pitied its excess. You say her not coming
to the door when you went is a proof yes,
that her complement is at present full !
That is the reason she doesn't want me
there, lest I should discover the new affair
wretch that I am ! Another has possession
of her, oh Hell ! I'm satisfied of it from
her manner, which had a wanton insolence
in it. Well might I run wild when I re-

LETTER VII. 71

ceived no letters from her. I foresaw, I felt
my fate. The gates of Paradise were at
once open to me too, and I blushed to enter
but with the golden keys of love ! I would
die ; but her lover my love of her ought
not to die. When I am dead, who will love
her as I have done ? If she should be in
misfortune, who will comfort her? When
she is old, who will look in her face, and
bless her? Would there be any harm in

calling upon M , to know confidentially

if he thinks it worth my while to make her
an offer the instant it is in my power?
Let me have an answer, and save me, if
possible, yV her and/rom myself.

LETTER VIII.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Your letter raised me for a moment from
the depths of despair ; but not hearing from
you yesterday or to-day (as I hoped) I have
had a relapse. You say I want to get rid of
her. I hope you are more right in your
conjectures about her than in this about me.
Oh no ! believe it, I love her as I do my
own soul ; my very heart is wedded to her
(be she what she may) and I would not
hesitate a moment between her and "an
angel from Heaven." I grant all you say
about my self-tormenting folly : but has it
been without cause ? Has she not refused
me again and again with a mixture of scorn
and resentment, after going the utmost
lengths with a man for whom she now dis-

LETTER VIII. 73

claims all affection ; and what security can
I have for her reserve with others, who will
not be restrained by feelings of delicacy
towards her, and whom she has probably
preferred to me for their want of it ? " She
can make no more confidences" these words
ring for ever in my ears, and will be my
death-watch. They can have but one mean-
ing, be sure of it she always expressed
herself with the exactest propriety. That
was one of the things for which I loved her
shall I live to hate her for it ? My poor
fond heart, that brooded over her and the
remains of her affections as my only hope
of comfort upon earth, cannot brook this
new degradation. Who is there so low as
me ? Who is there besides (I ask) after the
homage I have paid her and the caresses
she has lavished on me, so vile, so abhorrent
to love, to whom such an indignity could
have happened ? When I think of this
(and I think of nothing else) it stifles me.
I am pent up in burning, fruitless desires,
which can find no vent or object. Am I
not hated, repulsed, derided by her whom

74 LETTER VIII.

alone I love or ever did love ? I cannot
stay in any place, and seek in vain for relief
from the sense of her contempt and her in-
gratitude. I can settle to nothing : what is
the use of all I have done ? Is it not that
very circumstance (my thinking beyond my
strength, my feeling more than I need about
so many things) that has withered me up,
and made me a thing for Love to shrink
from and wonder at ? Who could ever feel
that peace from the touch of her dear hand
that I have done ; and is it not torn from
me for ever ? My state is this, that I shall
never lie down again at night nor rise up in
the morning in peace, nor ever behold my
little boy's face with pleasure while I live
unless I am restored to her favour. Instead
of that delicious feeling I had when she
was heavenly-kind to me, and my heart
softened and melted in its own tenderness
and her sweetness, I am now inclosed in a
dungeon of despair. The sky is marble to
my thoughts ; nature is dead around me, as
hope is within me ; no object can give me
one gleam of satisfaction now, nor the pros-

LETTER VIII. 75

pect of it in time to come. I wander by
the sea-side ; and the eternal ocean and
lasting despair and her face are before me.
Slighted by her, on whom my heart by its
last fibre hung, where shall I turn ? I wake
with her by my side, not as my sweet bed-
fellow, but as the corpse of my love, with-
out a heart in her bosom, cold, insensible,
or struggling from me ; and the worm gnaws
me, and the sting of unrequited love, and
the canker of a hopeless, endless sorrow. I
have lost the taste of my food by feverish
anxiety ; and my favourite beverage, which
used to refresh me when I got up, has no
moisture in it. Oh ! cold, solitary, sepul-
chral breakfasts, compared with those which
I promised myself with her ; or which I
made when she had been standing an hour
by my side, my guardian-angel, my wife, my
sister, my sweet friend, my Eve, my all ;
and had blest me with her seraph-kisses !
Ah ! what I suffer at present only shews
what I have enjoyed. But "the girl is a
good girl, if there is goodness in human
nature." I thank you for those words ; and

j6 LETTER VIII.

I will fall down and worship you, if you can
prove them true : and I would not do much
less for him that proves her a demon. She
is one or the other, that's certain ; but I fear
the worst. Do let me know if any thing
has passed : suspense is my greatest punish-
ment. I am going into the country to see
if I can work a little in the three weeks I
have yet to stay here. Write on the receipt
of this, and believe me ever your unspeak-
ably obliged friend.

TO EDINBURGH.

" Stony-hearted" Edinburgh ! What

art thou to me ? The dust of thy streets
mingles with my tears and blinds me. City
of palaces, or of tombs a quarry, rather
than the habitation of men ! Art thou like
London, that populous hive, with its sun-
burnt, well-baked, brick-built houses its
public edifices, its theatres, its bridges, its
squares, its ladies, and its pomp, its throng
of wealth, its outstretched magnitude, and
its mighty heart that never lies still ? Thy
cold grey walls reflect back the leaden me-
lancholy of the soul. The square, hard-
edged, unyielding faces of thy inhabitants
have no sympathy to impart. What is it
to me that I look along the level line of thy
tenantless streets, and meet perhaps a law-
yer like a grasshopper chirping and skip-

78 TO EDINBURGH.

ping, or the daughter of a Highland laird,
haughty, fair, and freckled ? Or why should
I look down your boasted Prince's-street,
with the beetle-browed Castle on one side,
and the Calton-hill with its proud monu-
ment at the further end, and the ridgy steep
of Salisbury-Crag, cut off abruptly by Na-
ture* s boldest hand, and Arthur's- Seat over-
looking all, like a lioness watching her
cubs ? Or shall I turn to the far-off Pent-
land-hills, with Craig-Crook nestling beneath
them, where lives the prince of critics and
the king of men ? Or cast my eye unsated
over the Frith of Forth, that from my win-
dow of an evening (as I read of AMY and her
love) glitters like a broad golden mirror in
the sun, and kisses the win'ding shores of
kingly Fife ? Oh no ! But to thee, to thee
I turn, North Berwick-Law, with thy blue
cone rising out of summer seas ; for thou
art the beacon of my banished thoughts,
and dost point my way to her, who is my
heart's true home. The air is too thin for
me, that has not the breath of Love in it ;
that is not embalmed by her sighs !

A THOUGHT.

I am not mad, but my heart is so ; and
raves within me, fierce and untameable, like
a panther in its den, and tries to get loose
to its lost mate, and fawn on her hand, and
bend lowly at her feet.

ANOTHER.

Oh ! thou dumb heart, lonely, sad, shut
up in the prison-house of this rude form,
that hast never found a fellow but for an in-
stant, and in very mockery of thy misery,
speak, find bleeding words to express thy
thoughts, break thy dungeon-gloom, or die
pronouncing thy Infelice's name !

ANOTHER.

Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and
base fear, and shame and hate ; but above
all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned
with her graces, silent and in tears.

LETTER IX.

MY DEAR P

You have been very kind to me in this
business ; but I fear even your indulgence
for my infirmities is beginning to fail. To
what a state am I reduced, and for what ?
For fancying a little artful vixen to be an
angel and a saint, because she affected to
look like one, to hide her rank thoughts and
deadly purposes. Has she not murdered me
under the mask of the tenderest friendship ?
And why ? Because I have loved her with
unutterable love, and sought to make her my
wife. You say it is my own "outrageous
conduct" that has estranged her ; nay, I have
been too gentle with her. I ask you first in
candour whether the ambiguity of her beha-
viour with respect to me, sitting and fondling
a man (circumstanced as I was) sometimes

LETTER IX. 8 1

for half a day together, and then declaring
she had no love for him beyond common re-
gard, and professing never to marry, was not
enough to excite my suspicions, which the
different exposures from the conversations
below-stairs were not calculated to allay ? I
ask you what you yourself would have felt or
done, if loving her as I did, you had heard
what I did, time after time ? Did not her
mother own to one of the grossest charges
(which I shall not repeat) and is such inde-
licacy to be reconciled with her pretended
character (that character with which I fell in
love, and to which I made love) without sup-
posing her to be the greatest hypocrite in
the world ? My unpardonable offence has
been that I took her at her word, and was
willing to believe her the precise little puri-
tanical person she set up for. After exciting
her wayward desires by the fondest embraces
and the purest kisses, as if she had been
" made my wedded wife yestreen," or was to
become so to-morrow (for that was always
my feeling with respect to her) I did not
proceed to gratify them, or to follow up my

G

82 LETTER IX.

advantage by any action which should de-
clare, " I think you a common adventurer,
and will see whether you are so or not !"
Yet any one but a credulous fool like me
would have made the experiment, with what-
ever violence to himself, as a matter of life
and death ; for I had every reason to distrust
appearances. Her conduct has been of a
piece from the beginning. In the midst of
her closest and falsest endearments, she has
always (with one or two exceptions) dis-
claimed the natural inference to be drawn
from them, and made a verbal reservation,
by which she might lead me on in a Fool's
Paradise, and make me the tool of her levity,
her avarice, and her love of intrigue as long
as she liked, and dismiss me whenever it
suited her. This, you see, she has done,
because my intentions grew serious, and if
complied with, would deprive her of the plea-
sures of a single life ! Offer marriage to this
" tradesman's daughter, who has as nice a
sense of honour as any one can have ;" and
like Lady Bellaston in Tom Jones she cuts
you immediately in a fit of abhorrence and

LETTER IX. 83

alarm. Yet she seemed to be of a different
mind formerly, when struggling from me in
the height of our first intimacy, she ex-
claimed " However I might agree to my
own ruin, I never will consent to bring dis-
grace upon my family !" That I should have
spared the traitress after expressions like
this, astonishes me when I look back upon
it. Yet if it were all to do over again, I know
I should act just the same part. Such is
her power over me ! I cannot run", the
least risk of offending her I love her so.
When I look in her face, I cannot doubt
her truth ! Wretched being that I am !
I have thrown away my heart and soul upon
an unfeeling girl ! and my life (that might
have been so happy, had she been what I
thought her) will soon follow either volun-
tarily, or by the force of grief, remorse, and
disappointment. I cannot get rid of the
reflection for an instant, nor even seek relief
from its galling pressure. Ah ! what a
heart she has lost ! All the love and affect-
ion of my whole life were centred in her,
who alone, I thought, of all women had

84 LETTER IX.

found out my true character, and knew how
to value my tenderness. Alas ! alas ! that
this, the only hope, joy, or comfort I ever
had, should turn to a mockery, and hang like
an ugly film over the remainder of my
days ! I was at Roslin Castle yesterday.
It lies low in a rude, but sheltered valley,
hid from the vulgar gaze, and powerfully
reminds one of the old song. The strag-
gling fragments of the russet ruins, suspend-
ed smiling and graceful in the air as if they
would linger out another century to please
the curious beholder, the green larch-trees
trembling between with the blue sky and
white silver clouds, the wild mountain plants
starting out here and there, the date of the
year on an old low door-way, but still more,
the beds of flowers in orderly decay, that
seem to have no hand to tend them, but
keep up a sort of traditional remembrance
of civilization in former ages, present
altogether a delightful and amiable subject
for contemplation. The exquisite beauty of
the scene, with the thought of what I should
feel, should I ever be restored to her, and

LETTER IX. 85

have to lead her through such places as my
adored, my angel-wife, almost drove me
beside myself. For this picture, this ecstatic
vision, what have I of late instead as the
image of the reality ? Demoniacal posses-
sions. I see the young witch seated in
another's lap, twining her serpent arms
round him, her eye glancing and her cheeks
on fire why does not the hideous thought
choke me ? Or why do I not go and find
out the truth at once ? The moonlight
streams over the silver waters : the bark is
in the bay that might waft me to her, almost
with a wish. The mountain-breeze sighs
out her name : old ocean with a world of
tears murmurs back my woes ! Does not
my heart yearn to be with her ; and shall I
not follow its bidding ? No, I must wait
till I am free ; and then I will take my
Freedom (a glad prize) and lay it at her
feet and tell her my proud love of her that
would not brook a rival in her dishonour,
and that would have her all or none, and
gain her or lose myself for ever !

You see by this letter the way I am in,

86 LETTER IX.

and I hope you will excuse it as the picture
of a half-disordered mind. The least
respite from my uneasiness (such as I had
yesterday) only brings the contrary reflection
back upon me, like a flood ; and by letting
me see the happiness I have lost, makes me
feel, by contrast, more acutely what I am
doomed to bear.

LETTER X.

DEAR FRIEND,

Here I am at St. Bees once more, amid the
scenes which I greeted in their barrenness
in winter ; but which have now put on their
full green attire that shows luxuriant to the
eye, but speaks a tale of sadness to this
heart widowed of its last, its dearest, its only
hope ! Oh ! lovely Bees-Inn ! here I com-
posed a volume of law- cases, here I wrote
my enamoured follies to her, thinking her
human, and that "all below was not the
fiend's " here I got two cold, sullen answers

from the little witch, and here I was

and I was damned. I thought the revisiting
the old haunts would have soothed me for a
time, but it only brings back the sense of
what I have suffered for her and of her un-
kindness the more strongly, till I cannot en-

88 LETTER X.

ydure the recollection. I eye the Heavens in
dumb despair, or vent my sorrows in the
desart air. " To the winds, to the waves, to
the rocks I complain" you may suppose
with what effect ! I fear I shall be obliged
to return. I am tossed about (backwards
and forwards) by my passion, so as to be-
come ridiculous. I can now understand
how it is that mad people never remain in
the same place they are moving on for ever,
from themselves !

Do you know, you would have been de-
lighted with the effect of the Northern twi-
light on this romantic country as I rode
along last night ? The hills and groves and
herds of cattle were seen reposing in the
grey dawn of midnight, as in a moonlight
without shadow. The whole wide canopy
of Heaven shed its reflex light upon them,
like a pure crystal mirror. No sharp points,
no pretty details, no hard contrasts every
object was seen softened yet distinct, in its
simple outline and natural tones, trans-
parent with an inward light, breathing its
own mild lustre. The landscape altogether

LETTER X. 89

was like an airy piece of mosaic-work, or
like one of Poussin's broad massy land-
scapes or Titian's lovely pastoral scenes. Is
it not so, that poets see nature, veiled to the
sight, but revealed to the soul in visionary
grace and grandeur ! I confess the sight
touched me ; and might have removed all
sadness except mine. So (I thought) the
light of her celestial face once shone into
my soul, and wrapt me in a heavenly trance.
The sense I have of beauty raises me for a
moment above myself, but depresses me the
more afterwards, when I recollect how it is
thrown away in vain admiration, and that it
only makes me more susceptible of pain
from the mortifications I meet with. Would
I had never seen her ! I might then not in-
deed have been happy, but at least I might
have passed my life in peace, and have sunk
into forgetfulness without a pang. The
noble scenery in this country mixes with my
passion, and refines, but does not relieve it.
I was at Stirling Castle not long ago. It
gave me no pleasure. The declivity seemed
to me abrupt, not sublime ; for in truth I did

90 LETTER X.

not shrink back from it with terror. The
weather-beaten towers were stiff and formal :
the air was damp and chill : the river winded
its dull, slimy way like a snake along the
marshy grounds : and the dim misty tops of
Ben Leddi, and the lovely Highlands (woven
fantastically of thin air) mocked my embraces
and tempted my longing eyes like her, the
sole queen and mistress of my thoughts ! I
never found my contemplations on this sub-
ject so subtilised and at the same time so
desponding as on that occasion. I wept
myself almost blind, and I gazed at the broad
golden sun-set through my tears that fell in
showers. As I trod the green mountain turf,
oh ! how I wished to be laid beneath it in
one grave with her that I might sleep with
her in that cold bed, my hand in hers, and
my heart for ever still while worms should
taste her sweet body, that I had never tasted !
There was a time when I could bear solitude ;
but it is too much for me at present. Now
I am no sooner left to myself than I am
lost in infinite space, and look round me in
vain for support or comfort. She was my

LETTER X. 91

stay, my hope : without her hand to cling to,
I stagger like an infant on the edge of a pre-
cipice. The universe without her is one
wide, hollow abyss, in which my harassed
thoughts can find no resting-place. I must \L
break off here ; for the hysterica passio comes
upon me, and threatens to unhinge my
reason.

LETTER XL

MY DEAR AND GOOD FRIEND,

I am afraid I trouble you with my queru-
lous epistles, but this is probably the last.
To-morrow or the next day decides my fate
with respect to the divorce, when I expect
to be a free man. In vain ! Was is not for
her and to lay my freedom at her feet, that
I consented to this step which has cost me
infinite perplexity, and now to be discarded
for the first pretender that came in her way!
If so, I hardly think I can survive it. You
who have been a favourite with women, do
not know what it is to be deprived of one's
only hope, and to have it turned to shame
and disappointment. There is nothing in
the world left that can afford me one drop of
comfort this I feel more and more. Every
thing is to me a mockery of pleasure, like

LETTER XI. 93

her love. The breeze does not cool me : the
blue sky does not cheer me. I gaze only on
her face averted from me alas ! the only
face that ever was turned fondly to me !
And why am I thus treated ? Because I
wanted her to be mine for ever in love or
friendship, and did not push my gross fami-
liarities as far as I might. " Why can you
not go on as we have done, and say noth-
ing about the word, forever ? " Was it not
plain from this that she even then medi-
tated an escape from me to some less sen-
timental lover ? " Do you allow any one
else to do so ? " I said to her once, as I was
toying with her. " No, not now ! " was her
answer; that is, because there was nobody
else in the house to take freedoms with her.
I was very well as a stopgap, but I was to be
nothing more. While the coast was clear, I
had it all my own way : but the instance

C came, she flung herself at his head

in the most bare-faced way, ran breathless
up stairs before him, blushed when his foot
was heard, watched for him in the passage,
and was sure to be in close conference with

94 LETTER XI.

him when he went down again. It was then
my mad proceedings commenced. No won-
der. Had I not reason to be jealous of
every appearance of familiarity with others,
knowing how easy she had been with me at
first, and that she only grew shy when I did
not take farther liberties ? What has her
character to rest upon but her attachment
to me, which she now denies, not modestly,
but impudently ? Will you yourself say that
if she had all along no particular regard for
me, she will not do as much or more with
other more likely men? "She has had,"
she says, " enough of my conversation, " so
it could not be that ! Ah I my friend, it was
not to be supposed I should ever meet even
with the outward demonstrations of regard
from any woman but a common trader in the
endearments of love ! I have tasted the
sweets of the well practised illusion, and
now feel the bitterness of knowing what a
bliss I am deprived of, and must ever be de-
prived of. Intolerable conviction ! Yet I
might, I believe, have won her by other
methods ; but some demon held my hand.

LETTER XI. 95

How indeed could I offer her the least insult
when I worshipped her very footsteps ; and
even now pay her divine honours from my
inmost heart, whenever I think of her, abased
and brutalised as I have been by that Circean
cup of kisses, of enchantments, of which I
have drunk ! I am choked, withered, dried
up with chagrin, remorse, despair, from
which I have not a moment's respite, day or
night. I have always some horrid dream
about her, and wake wondering what is the
matter that " she is no longer the same to
me as ever ?" I thought at least we should
always remain dear friends, if nothing more
did she not talk of coming to live with me
only the day before I left her in the winter ?
But " she's gone, I am abused, and my re-
venge must be to love her !" Yet she knows
that one line, one word would save me, the
cruel, heartless destroyer ! I see nothing
for it but madness, unless Friday brings a
change, or unless she is willing to let me go
back. You must know I wrote to her to that
purpose, but it was a very quiet, sober letter,
begging pardon, and professing reform for

96 LETTER XI.

the future, and all that. What effect it will
have, I know not. I was forced to get out
of the way of her answer, till Friday came.
Ever your's.

TO S. L.

MY DEAR MISS L-

Evil to them that evil think, is an old say-
ing ; and I have found it a true one. I have
ruined myself by my unjust suspicions of
you. Your sweet friendship was the balm of
my life ; and I have lost it, I fear for ever,
by one fault and folly after another. What
would I give to be restored to the place in
your esteem, which, you assured me, I held
only a few months ago ! Yet I was not
contented, but did all I could to torment
myself and harass you by endless doubts
and jealousy. Can you not forget and for-
give the past, and judge of me by my con-
duct in future ? Can you not take all my
follies in the lump, and say like a good,
generous girl, " Well, I'll think no more of
H

98 TO s. L.

them ? " In a word, may I come back, and
try to behave better? A line to say so
would be an additional favour to so many
already received by

Your obliged friend,

And sincere well-wisher.

LETTER XII. TO C. P .

I have no answer from her. I'm mad. I

wish you to call on M in confidence, to

say I intend to make her an offer of my
hand, and that I will write to her father to
that effect the instant I am free, and ask him
whether he thinks it will be to any purpose,
and what he would advise me to do.

UNALTERED LOVE.

"Love is not love that alteration finds :
Oh no ! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken."

SHALL I not love her for herself alone,
in spite of fickleness and folly ? To love
her for her regard to me, is not to love her,
but myself. She has robbed me of herself:
shall she also rob me of my love of her ?
"Did I not live on her smile ? Is it less
sweet because it is withdrawn from me ?
Did I not adore her every grace ? Does she
bend less enchantingly, because she has
turned from me to another ? Is my love
then in the power of fortune, or of her ca-
price ? No, I will have it lasting as it is
pure ; and I will make a Goddess of her,
and build a temple to her in my heart, and
worship her on indestructible altars, and*

UNALTERED LOVE. IOI

raise statues to her: and my homage shall
be unblemished as her unrivalled symmetry
of form ; and when that fails, the memory
of it shall survive ; and my bosom shall be
proof to scorn, as her's has been to pity ;
and I will pursue her with an unrelenting
love, and sue to be her slave, and tend her
steps without notice and without reward ;
and serve her living, and mourn for her
when dead. And thus my love will have
shewn itself superior to her hate ; and I
shall triumph and then die. This is my idea
of the only true and heroic love ! Such is
mine for her.

PERFECT LOVE.

PERFECT love has this advantage in it,
that it leaves the possessor of it nothing-
farther to desire. There is one object (at
least) in which the soul finds absolute con-
tent, for which it seeks to live, or dares to
die. The heart has as it were filled up the
moulds of the imagination. The truth of
passion keeps pace with and outvies the
extravagance of mere language. There are
no words so fine, no flattery so soft, that
there is not a sentiment beyond them, that
it is impossible to express, at the bottom of
the heart where true love is. What idle
sounds the common phrases, adorable crea-
ture, angel, divinity, are ! What a proud
reflection it is to have a feeling answering
to all these, rooted in the breast, unalterable,

PERFECT LOVE. 103

unutterable, to which all other feelings are
light and vain ! Perfect love reposes on the
object of its choice, like the halcyon on the
wave ; and the air of heaven is around it.

FROM C. P. ESQ.

London, July ^th, 1822.

I have seen M ! Now, my dear H ,

let me entreat and adjure you to take what
I have to tell you, for what it is worth
neither for less, nor more. In the first
place, I have learned nothing decisive from
him. This, as you will at once see, is, as
far as it goes, good. I am either to hear
from him, or see him again in a day or two ;
but I thought you would like to know what
passed inconclusive as it was so I write
without delay, and in great haste to save a
post. I found him frank, and even friendly
in his manner to me, and in his views re-
specting you. I think that he is sincerely
sorry for your situation ; and he feels that
the person who has placed you in that situ-

FROM C. P. ESQ. 105

ation is not much less awkwardly situated
herself; and he professes that he would
willingly do what he can for the good of
both. But he sees great difficulties attend-
ing the affair which he frankly professes to
consider as an altogether unfortunate one.
With respect to the marriage, he seems to
see the most formidable objections to it, on
both sides ; but yet he by no means decid-
edly says that it cannot, or that it ought not
to take place. These, mind you, are his
own feelings on the subject : but the most
important point I learn from him is this,
that he is not prepared to use his influence
either way that the rest of the family are
of the same way of feeling ; and that, in
fact, the thing must and does entirely rest
with herself. To learn this was, as you see,
gaining a great point. When I then endea-
voured to ascertain whether he knew any
thing decisive as to what are her views
on the subject, I found that he did not.
He has an opinion on the subject, and he
didn't scruple to tell me what it was ; but
he has no positive knowledge. In short,

106 FROM C. P. ESQ.

he believes, from what he learns from her-
self (and he had purposely seen her on
the subject, in consequence of my appli-
cation to him) that she is at present indis-
posed to the marriage ; but he is not
prepared to say positively that she will not
consent to it. Now all this, coming from
him in the most frank and unaffected
manner, and without any appearance of
cant, caution, or reserve, I take to be most
important as it respects your views, whatever
they may be ; and certainly much more
favorable to them (I confess it) than I was
prepared to expect, supposing them to
remain as they were. In fact, as I said
before, the affair rests entirely with herself.
They are none of them disposed either to
further the marriage, or throw any insur-
mountable obstacles in the way of it ; and
what is more important than all, they are
evidently by no means certain that SHE may
not, at some future period, consent to it ;
or they would, for her sake as well as their
own, let you know as much flatly, and put
an end to the affair at once.

FROM C. P. ESQ. 107

Seeing in how frank and straitforward a
manner he received what I had to say to
him, and replied to it, I proceeded to ask
him what were his views, and what were
likely to be her's (in case she did not con-
sent) as to whether you should return to
live in the house ; but I added, without
waiting for his answer, that if she intended
to persist in treating you as she had done
for some time past, it would be worse than
madness for you to think of returning. I
added that, in case you did return, all you
would expect from her would be that she
would treat you with civility and kindness
that she would continue to evince that
friendly feeling towards you, that she had
done for a great length of time, &c. To
this, he said, he could really give no de-
cisive reply, but that he should be most
happy if, by any intervention of his, he
could conduce to your comfort ; but he
seemed to think that for you to return on any
express understanding that she should behave
to you in any particular manner, would be to
place her in a most awkward situation. He

108 FROM C. P. ESQ.

went somewhat at length into this point,
and talked very reasonably about it; the
result however was that he would not throw
any obstacles in the way of your return, or
of her treating you as a friend, &c. nor did
it appear that he believed she would refuse
to do so. And, finally, we parted on the
understanding that he would see them on
the subject, and ascertain what could be
done for the comfort of all parties : though
he was of opinion that if you could make
up your mind to break off the acquaintance
altogether, it would be the best plan of all.
I am to hear from him again in a day or two.
Well, what do you say to all this ? Can
you turn it to any thing but good compar-
ative good ? If you would know what / say
to it, it is this : She is still to be won by
wise and prudent conduct on your part ;
she was always to have been won by such ;
and if she is lost, it has been (not, as you
sometimes suppose, because you have not
carried that unwise, may I not say unworthy ?
conduct still farther, but) because you gave
way to it at all. Of course I use the terms

FROM C. P. ESQ. 109

and "prudent'* with reference to
your object. Whether the pursuit of that
object is wise, only yourself can judge. I
say she has all along been to be won, and
she still is to be won ; and all that stands in
the way of your views at this moment is
your past conduct. They are all of them,**"*^ f
every soul, frightened at you ; they have seen
enough of you to make them so ; and they
have doubtless heard ten times more than
they have seen, or than any one else has

seen. They are all of them, including M

(and particularly she herself) frightened out
of their wits, as to what might be your
treatment of her if she were your's ; and
they dare not trust you they will not trust-
you, at present. I do not say that they will
trust you or rather that she will, for it all
depends on her, when you have gone through
a probation, but I am sure that she will not
trust you till you have. You will, I hope,
not be angry with me when I say that she
would be a fool if she did. If she were to
accept you at present, and without knowing
more of you, even / should begin to suspect

110 FROM C. P. ESQ.

that she had an unworthy motive for doing it.
Let me not forget to mention what is perhaps
as important a point as any, as it regards the

marriage. I of course stated to M that

when you are free, you are prepared to make
her a formal offer of your hand ; but I begged
him, if he was certain that such an offer
would be refused, to tell me so plainly at
once, that I might endeavour, in that case,
to dissuade you from subjecting yourself to
the pain of such a refusal. He would not
tell me that he was certain. He said his
opinion was that she would not accept your
offer, but still he seemed to think that there
would be no harm in making it ! One word
more, and a very important one. He once,
and without my referring in the slightest
manner to that part of th$ subject, spoke of
her as a good girl, and likely to make any man
an excellent wife I Do you think if she were
a bad girl (and if she were, he must know
her to be so) he would have dared to do this,
under these circumstances ? And once, in
speaking of his not being a fit person to set
his face against " marrying for love," he

FROM C. P. ESQ. Ill

added "I did so myself, and out of that
house ; and I have had reason to rejoice at
it ever since." And mind (for I anticipate
your cursed suspicions) I'm certain, at least,
if manner can entitle one to be certain of
any thing, that he said all this spontaneously,
and without any understood motive ; and I'm
certain, too, that he knows you to be a
person it would not do to play any tricks of
this kind with. I believe (and all this
would never have entered my thoughts, but
that I know it will enter your's) I believe
that even if they thought (as you have some-
times supposed they do) that she needs
whitewashing, or making an honest woman
of, you would be the last person they would
think of using for such a purpose, for they
know (as well as I do) that you couldn't fail
to find out the trick in a month, and would
turn her into the street the next moment,
though she were twenty times your wife
and that, as to the consequences of doing
so, you would laugh at them, even if you
cou'dn't escape from them. I shall lose the
post if I say more.

Believe me, Ever truly your friend,

C.P.

LETTER XIII.

MY DEAR P-

You have saved my life, If I do not keep
friends with her now, I deserve to be hanged,
drawn, and quartered. She is an angel from
Heaven, and you cannot pretend I ever said
a word to the contrary! The little rogue
must have liked me from the first, or she
never could have stood all these hurricanes
without slipping her cable. What could she
find in me ? " I have mistook my person
all this while," &c. Do you know I saw a
picture, the very pattern of her, the other
day, at Dalkeith Palace (Hope finding For-
tune in the Sea) just before this blessed news
came, and the resemblance drove me almost
out of my senses. Such delicacy, such ful-
ness, such perfect softness, such buoyancy,

LETTER XIII. 113

such grace ! If it is not the very image of
her, I am no judge. You have the face to
doubt my making the best husband in the
world : you might as well doubt it if I was
married to one of the Houris of Paradise.
She is a saint, an angel, a love. If she
deceives me again, she kills me. But I will
have such a kiss when I get back, as shall
last me twenty years. May God bless her
for not utterly disowning and destroying me !
What an exquisite little creature it is, and
how she holds out to the last in her system
of consistent contradictions ! Since I wrote
to you about making a formal proposal, I
have had her face constantly before me,
looking so like some faultless marble statue,
as cold, as fixed and graceful as ever statue
did ; the expression (nothing was ever like
that /) seemed to say " I wish I could love
you better than I do, but still I will be your's."
No, I'll never believe again that she will not
be mine ; for I think she was made on pur-
pose for me. If there's any one else that
understands that turn of her head as I do,
I'll give her up without scruple. I have
I

114 LETTER XIII.

made up my mind to this, never to dream of
another woman, while she even thinks it
worth her while to refuse to have me. You
see I am not hard to please, after all. Did
M know of the intimacy that had sub-
sisted between us ? Or did you hint at it ?
I think it would be a clencher, if he did.
How ought I to behave when I go back ?
Advise a fool, who had nearly lost a Goddess
by his folly. The thing was, I could not think
it possible she should ever like me. Her
taste is singular, but not the worse for that.
I'd rather have her love, or liking (call it
what you will) than empires. I deserve to
call her mine ; for nothing else can atone for
what I've gone through for her. I hope your
next letter will not reverse all, and then I
shall be happy till I see her-: one of the blest
when I do see her, if she looks like my own
beautiful love. I may perhaps write a line
when I come to my right wits. Farewel at
present, and thank you a thousand times
for what you have done for your poor
friend.

LETTER XIII. I 15

P.S. I like what M said about her

sister, much. There are good people in the
world : I begin to see it, and believe it.

LETTER THE LAST.

DEAR P-

To-morrow is the decisive day that
makes me or mars me. I will let you know
the result by a line added to this. Yet
what signifies it, since either way I have little
hope there, "whence alone my hope cometh !"
You must know I am strangely in the dumps
at this present writing. My reception with
her is doubtful, and my fate is then certain.
The hearing of your happiness has, I own,
made me thoughtful. It is just what I pro-
posed to her to do to have crossed the Alps
with me, to sail on sunny seas, to bask in
Italian skies, to have visited Vevai and the
rocks of Meillerie, and to have repeated to
her on the spot the story of Julia and St.
Preux, and to have shewn her all that my

LETTER THE LAST. I I 7

heart had stored up for her but on my fore-
head alone is written REJECTED ! Yet I
too could have adored as fervently, and
loved as tenderly as others, had I been per-
mitted. You are going abroad, you say,
happy in making happy. Where shall I be ?
In the grave, I hope, or else in her arms.
To me, alas ! there is no sweetness out of
her sight, and that sweetness has turned to
bitterness, I fear ; that gentleness to sullen
scorn ! Still I hope for the Jbest. If she
will but have me, I'll make her love me : and
I think her not giving a positive answer
looks like it, and also shews that there is no
one else. Her holding out to the last also,
I think, proves that she was never to have
been gained but with honour. She's a strange,
almost an inscrutable girl : but if I once win
her consent, I shall kill her with kindness.
Will you let me have a sight of somebody be-
fore you go ? I should be most proud. I was
in hopes to have got away by the Steam-boat
to-morrow, but owing to the business not
coming on till then, I cannot ; and may not
be in town for another week, unless I come

Il8 LETTER THE LAST.

by the Mail, which I am strongly tempted to
do. In the latter case I shall be there, and
visible on Saturday evening. Will you look
in and see, about eight o'clock ? I wish
much to see you and her and J. H. and my
little boy once more ; and then, if she is not
what she once was to me, I care not if I die
that instant. I will conclude here till to-
morrow, as I am getting into my old me-
lancholy.

It is all over, and I am my own man, and
your's ever

LIBER AMORIS.
PART III.

ADDRESSED TO J. S. K-

MY DEAR K-

It is all over, and I know my fate. I told
you I would send you word, if any thing
decisive happened ; but an impenetrable
mystery hung over the affair till lately. It
is at last (by the merest accident in the
world) dissipated ; and I keep my promise,
both for your satisfaction, and for the ease
of my own mind.

You remember the morning when I said
" I will go and repose my sorrows at the foot
of Ben Lomond " and when from Dumbar-
ton-bridge its giant-shadow, clad in air and
sunshine, appeared in view. We had a
pleasant day's walk. We passed Smollet's
monument on the road (somehow these
poets touch one in reflection more than most

122 TO J. S. K. .

military heroes) talked of old times ; you
repeated Logan's beautiful verses to the
cuckoo,* which I wanted to compare with
Wordsworth's, but my courage failed me ;
you then told me some passages of an early
attachment which was suddenly broken off;
we considered together which was the most
to be pitied, a disappointment in love where
the attachment was mutual or one where
there has been no return, and we both agreed,
I think, that the former was best to be en-
dured, and that to have the consciousness of

* " Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear ;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year."

So they begin. It was the month of May ; the cuckoo
sang shrouded in some woody copse ; the showers
fell between whiles ; my friend repeated the lines with
native enthusiasm in a clear manly voice, still resonant
of youth and hope. Mr. Wordsworth will excuse
me, if in these circumstances I declined entering the
field with his profounder metaphysical strain, and kept
my preference to myself.

TO J. S. K . 123

it a companion for life was the least evil of
the two, as there was a secret sweetness that
took off the bitterness and the sting of regret,
and " the memory of what once had been "
atoned, in some measure, and at intervals, for
what " never more could be." In the other
case, there was nothing to look back to with
tender satisfaction, no redeeming trait, not
even a possibility of turning it to good. It
left behind it not cherished sighs, but stifled
pangs. The galling sense of it did not bring
moisture into the eyes, but dried up the
heart ever after. One had been my fate, the
other had been yours !

You startled me every now and then from
my reverie by the robust voice, in which you
asked the country people (by no means pro-
digal of their answers) "If there jwas 'any
trout-fishing in those streams ?" and our
dinner at Luss set us up for the rest of our
day's march. The sky now became over-
cast ; but this, I think, added to the effect
of the scene. The road to Tarbet is superb.
It is on the very verge of the^lake hard
level, rocky, with low stone-bridges con-

124 TO J- s - K

stantly flung across it, and fringed with birch
trees, just then budding into spring, behind
which, as through a slight veil, you saw the
huge shadowy form of Ben Lomond. It lifts
its enormous but graceful bulk direct from the
edge of the water without any projecting
lowlands, and has in this respect much the
advantage of Skiddaw. Loch Lomond comes
upon you by degrees as you advance, un-
folding and then withdrawing its conscious
beauties like an accomplished coquet. You
are struck with the point of a rock, the arch
of a bridge, the Highland huts (like the first
rude habitations of men) dug out of the soil,
built of turf, and covered with brown heather,
a sheep-cote, some straggling cattle feeding
half-way down a precipice ; but as you ad-
vance farther on, the view expands into the
perfection of lake scenery. It is nothing (or
your eye is caught by nothing) but water,
earth, and sky. Ben Lomond waves to the
right, in its simple majesty, cloud-capt or
bare, and descending to a point at the head
of the lake, shews the Trossacs beyond,
tumbling about their blue ridges like woods

TO J. S. K . 125

waving ; to the left is the Cobler, whose top
is like a castle shattered in pieces and nod-
ding to its ruin ; and at your side rise the
shapes of round pastoral hills, green, fleeced
with herds, and retiring into mountainous
bays and upland valleys, where solitude and
peace might make their lasting home, if
peace were to be found in solitude ! That it
was not always so, I was a sufficient proof ;
for there was one image that alone haunted
me in the midst of all this sublimity and
beauty, and turned it to a mockery and a
dream !

The snow on the mountain would not let
us ascend ; and being weary of waiting and
of being visited by the guide every two
hours to let us know that the weather would
not do, we returned, you homewards, and I
to London

" Italiam, Italiam !"

You know the anxious expectations with
which I set out : now hear the result.

As the vessel sailed up the Thames, the
air thickened with the consciousness of

I 26 TO J. S. K .

being near her, and I " heaved her name
pantingly forth." As I approached the
house, I could not help thinking of the
lines

" How near am I to happiness,
That earth exceeds not ! Not another like it.
The treasures of the deep are not so precious
As are the concealed comforts of a man
Lock'd up in woman's love. I scent the air
Of blessings when I come but near the house.
What a delicious breath true love sends forth !
The violet-beds not sweeter. Now for a welcome
Able to draw men's envies upon man :
A kiss now that will hang upon my lip,
As sweet as morning dew upon a rose,
And full as long ! "

I saw her, but I saw at the first glance that
there was something amiss. It was with
much difficulty and after several pressing
intreaties that she was prevailed on to come
up into the room ; and when she did, she
stood at the door, cold, distant, averse ; and
when at length she was persuaded by my
repeated remonstrances to come and take
my hand, and I offered to touch her lips,
she turned her head and shrunk from my

TO J. S. K . 127

embraces, as if quite alienated or mortally
offended. I asked what it could mean ?
What had I done in her absence to have
incurred her displeasure ? Why had she not
written to me ? I could get only short,
sullen, disconnected answers, as if there was
something labouring in her mind which she
either could not or would not impart. I
hardly knew how to bear this first reception
after so long an absence, and so different
from the one my sentiments towards her
merited ; but I thought it possible it migjit
be prudery (as I had returned without having
actually accomplished what I went about) or
that she had taken offence at something in
my letters. She saw how much I was hurt.
I asked her, "If she was altered since I went
away ? " " No." " If there was any one
else who had been so fortunate as to gain
her favourable opinion ? " " No, there was
no one else." " What was it then ? Was it
any thing in my letters ? Or had I displeased

her by letting Mr. P know she wrote to

me?" "No, not at all; but she did not
apprehend my last letter required any an-

128 TO J. S. K .

swer, or she would have replied to it." All
this appeared to me very unsatisfactory and
evasive ; but I could get no more from her,
and was obliged to let her go with a heavy,
foreboding heart. I however found that

C was gone, and no one else had been

there, of whom I had cause to be jealous.
" Should I see her on the morrow ? "
" She believed so, but she could not pro-
mise." The next morning she did not
appear with the breakfast as usual. At this
I grew somewhat uneasy. The little Buona-
parte, however, was placed in its old position
on the mantle-piece, which I considered as
a sort of recognition of old times. I saw her
once or twice casually ; nothing particular
happened till the next day, which was Sun-
day. I took occasion to go into the parlour
for the newspaper, which she gave me with
a gracious smile, and seemed tolerably frank
and cordial. This of course acted as a spell
upon me. I walked out with my little boy,
intending to go and dine out at one or two
places, but I found that I still contrived to
bend my steps towards her, and I went back

TO J. S. K . 129

to take tea at home. While we were out, I
talked to William about Sarah, saying that
she too was unhappy, and asking him to
make it up with her. He said, if she was
unhappy, he would not bear her malice any
more. When she came up with the tea-
things, I said to her, "William has something
to say to you I believe he wants to be
friends." On which he said in his abrupt,
hearty manner, " Sarah, I'm sorry if I've
ever said any thing to vex you" so they
shook hands, and she said, smiling affably
"Then I'll think no more of it ! " I added
" I see you've brought me back my little
Buonaparte" She answered with tremulous
softness " I told you I'd keep it safe for
you ! " as if her pride and pleasure in doing
so had been equal, and she had, as it were,
thought of nothing during my absence but
how to greet .me with this proof of her
fidelity on my return. I cannot describe her
manner. Her words are few and simple ;
but you can have no idea of the exquisite,
unstudied, irresistible graces with which she
accompanies them, unless you can suppose
K

130 TO J. S. K .

a Greek statue to smile, move, and speak.
Those lines in Tibullus seem to have been
written on purpose for her

Quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia vertit,
Componuit furtim, subsequiturque decor.

Or what do you think of those in a modern
play, which might actually have been com-
posed with an eye to this little trifler

" See with what a waving air she goes

Along the corridor. How like a fawn !
Yet statelier. No sound (however soft)
Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads,
But every motion of her shape doth seem
Hallowed by silence. So did Hebe grow
Among the Gods a paragon ! Away, I'm grown
The very fool of Love ! "

The truth is, I never saw any thing like her,
nor I never shall again. How then do I
console myself for the loss of her ? Shall I
tell you, but you will not mention it again ?
I am foolish enough to believe that she and
I, in spite of every thing, shall be sitting
together over a sea-coal fire, a comfortable

TO J. S. K . Ijr

good old couple, twenty years hence ! But
to my narrative.

I was delighted with the alteration in her
manner, and said, referring to the bust
" You know it is not mine, but your's ; I
gave it you ; nay, I have given you all my
heart, and whatever I possess, is your's ! "
She seemed good-humouredly to decline this
carte blanche offer, and waved, like a thing of
enchantment, out of the room. False calm !
Deceitful smiles ! Short interval of peace,
followed by lasting woe ! I sought an
interview with her that same evening. I
could not get her to come any farther
than the door. " She was busy she could
hear what I had to say there." "Why
do you seem to avoid me as you do ? Not
one five minutes' conversation, for the sake
of old acquaintance ? Well, then, for the
sake of the little image /" The appeal seemed
to have lost its efficacy ; the charm was
broken; she remained immoveable. "Well,
then, I must come to you, if you will not
run away." I went and sat down in a chair
near the door, and took her hand, and talked

132 TO J. S. K .

to her for three quarters of an hour; and she
listened patiently, thoughtfully, and seemed
a good deal affected by what I said. I
told her how much I had felt, how much I
had suffered for her in my absence, and how
much I had been hurt by her sudden silence,
for which I knew not how to account. I
could have done nothing to offend her while
I was away ; and my letters were, I hoped,
tender and respectful. I had had but one
thought ever present with me ; her image
never quitted my side, alone or in company,
to delight or distract me. Without her I
could have no peace, nor ever should again,
unless she would behave to me as she had
done formerly. There was no abatement of
my regard to her ; why was she so changed ?
I said to her, "Ah! Sarah, when I think
that it is only a year ago that you were every
thing to me I could wish, and that now you
seem lost to me for ever, the month of May
(the name of which ought to be a signal for
joy and hope) strikes chill to my heart.
How different is this meeting from that
delicious parting, when you seemed never

TO J. S. K . 133

weary of repeating the proofs of your regard
and tenderness, and it was with difficulty we
tore ourselves asunder at last ! I am ten
thousand times fonder of you than I was
then, and ten thousand times more unhappy.'*
"You have no reason to be so ; my feelings
towards you are the same as they ever were."
I told her " She was my all of hope or
comfort : my passion for her grew stronger
every time I saw her." She answered,
" She was sorry for it ; for that she never
could return." I said something about
looking ill : she said in her pretty, mincing,
emphatic way, "I despise looks!" So,
thought I, it is not that ; and she says
there's no one else : it must be some strange
air she gives herself, in consequence of the
approaching change in my circumstances.
She has been probably advised not to give
up till all is fairly over, and then she will be
rny own sweet girl again. All this time she
was standing just outside the door, my hand
in hers (would that they could have grown
together !) she was dressed in a loose
morning-gown, her hair curled beautifully ;

134 T J- s. K .

she stood with her profile to me, and looked
down the whole time. No expression was
ever more soft or perfect. Her whole
attitude, her whole form, was dignity and
bewitching grace. I said to her, " You look
like a queen, my love, adorned with your
own graces !" I grew idolatrous, and would
have kneeled to her. She made a movement,
as if she was displeased. I tried to draw
her towards me. She wouldn't. I then got
up, and offered to kiss her at parting. I
found she obstinately refused. This stung
me to the quick. It was the first time in her
life she had ever done so. There must be
some new bar between us to produce these
continued denials ; and she had not even
esteem enough left to tell me so. I followed
her half-way down-stairs, but to no purpose,
and returned into my room, confirmed in my
most dreadful surmises. I could bear it no
longer. I gave way to all the fury of disap-
pointed hope and jealous passion. I was
made the dupe of trick and cunning, killed
with cold, sullen scorn ; and, after all the
agony I had suffered, could obtain no

TO J. S. K . 135

explanation why I was subjected to it. I
was still to be tantalized, tortured, made the
cruel sport of one, for whom I would have
sacrificed all. I tore the locket which
contained her hair (and which I used to
wear continually in my bosom, as the precious
token of her dear regard) from my neck,
and trampled it in pieces. I then dashed
the little Buonaparte on the ground, and
stamped upon it, as one of her instruments
of mockery. I could not stay in the room ;
I could not leave it ; my rage, my despair
were uncontroulable. I shrieked curses on
her name, and on her false love ; and the
scream I uttered (so pitiful and so piercing
was it, that the sound of it terrified me)
instantly brought the whole house, father,
mother, lodgers and all, into the room.
They thought I was destroying her and
myself. I had gone into the bed-room,
merely to hide away from myself, and as I
came out of it, raging-mad with the new
sense of present shame and lasting misery,

Mrs. F said, " She's in there ! He has

got her in there !" thinking the cries had

136 TO J. S. K .

proceeded from her, and that I had been
offering her violence. " Oh ! no," I said,
" She's in no danger from me ; I am not the
person ; " and tried to burst from this scene
of degradation. The mother endeavoured
to stop me, and said, "For God's sake,

don't go out, Mr. ! for God's sake,

don't!" Her father, who was not, I believe,
in the secret, and was therefore justly
scandalised at such outrageous conduct, said
angrily, " Let him go ! Why should he stay?"
I however sprang down stairs, and as they
called out to me, " What is it ? What has
she done to you?" I answered, "She has
murdered me ! She has destroyed me for
ever ! She has doomed my soul to per-
dition !" I rushed out of the house, thinking
to quit it forever; but I was no sooner in
the street, than the desolation and the
darkness became greater, more intolerable ;
and the eddying violence of my passion
drove me back to the source, from whence it
sprung. This unexpected explosion, with
the conjectures to which it would give rise,
could not be very agreeable to the precieuse

TO J. S. K . 137

or her family: and when I went back, the
father was waiting at the door, as if antici-
pating this sudden turn of my feelings, with
no friendly aspect. I said, " I have to beg
pardon, Sir; but my mad fit is over, and I
wish to say a few words to you in private/ *
He seemed to hesitate, but some uneasy
forebodings on his own account, probably,
prevailed over his resentment ; or, perhaps
(as philosophers have a desire to know the
cause of thunder) it was a natural curiosity
to know what circumstances of provocation
had given rise to such an extraordinary scene
of confusion. When we reached my room,
I requested him to be seated. I said, " It is
true, Sir, I have lost my peace of mind
forever, but at present I am quite calm and
collected, and I wish to explain to you why
I have behaved in so extravagant a way, and
to ask for your advice and intercession."
He appeared satisfied, and I went on. I had
no chance either of exculpating myself, or
of probing the question to the bottom, but
by stating the naked truth, and therefore I
said at once, " Sarah told me, Sir (and I

138 TO J. S. K .

never shall forget the way in which she told
me, fixing her dove's eyes upon me, and
looking a thousand tender reproaches for
the loss of that good opinion, which she
held dearer than all the world) she told me,
Sir, that as you one day passed the door,
which stood a-jar, you saw her in an attitude
which a good deal startled you ; I mean
sitting in my lap, with her arms round my
neck, and mine twined round her in the
fondest manner. What I wished to ask was,
whether this was actually the case, or
whether it was a mere invention of her own,
to enhance the sense of my obligations to
her ; for I begin to doubt everything ? "
" Indeed, it was so ; and very much sur-
prised and hurt I was to see it." " Well,
then, Sir, I can only say, that as you saw her
sitting then, so she had been sitting for the
last year and a half, almost every day of her
life, by the hour together ; and you may
judge yourself, knowing what a nice modest-
looking girl she is, whether, after having
been admitted to such intimacy with so
sweet a creature, and for so long a time, it

TO J. S. K . 139

is not enough to make anyone frantic to
be received by her as I have been since
my return, without any provocation given
or cause assigned for it.'* The old man
answered very seriously, and, as I think,
sincerely, "What you now tell me, Sir,
mortifies and shocks me, as much as it
can do yourself. I had no idea such a
thing was possible. I was much pained at
what I saw ; but I thought it an accident,
and that it would never happen again."
"It was a constant habit; it has happened
a hundred times since, and a thousand
before. I lived on her caresses as my daily
food, nor can I live without them." So I
told him the whole story, u what conjura-
tions, and what mighty magic I won his
daughter with," to be anything but mine for
life. Nothing could well exceed his as-
tonishment and apparent mortification.
" What I had said," he owned, " had left
a weight upon his mind that he should not
easily get rid of.*' I told him, " For myself,
I never could recover the blow I had re-
ceived. I thought, however, for her own

140 TO J. S. K .

sake, she ought to alter her present be-
haviour. Her marked neglect and dislike,
so far from justifying, left her former inti-
macies without excuse ; for nothing could
reconcile them to propriety, or even a pre-
tence to common decency, but either love,
or friendship so strong and pure that it could
put on the guise of love. She was certainly
a singular girl. Did she think it right and
becoming to be free with strangers, and
strange to old friends ? " I frankly declared,
" I did not see how it was in human nature
for any one who was not rendered callous to
such familiarities by bestowing them indis-
criminately on every one, to grant the
extreme and continued indulgences she had
done to me, without either liking the man
at first, or coming to like him in the end, in
spite of herself. When my addresses had
nothing, and could have nothing honourable
in them, she gave them every encourage-
ment ; when I wished to make them honour-
able, she treated them with the utmost con-
tempt. The terms we had been all along on
were such as if she had been to be my bride

TO J. S. K . 141

next day. It was only when I wished her
actually to become so, to ensure her own
character and my happiness, that she shrunk
back with precipitation and panic-fear.
There seemed to me something wrong in all
this ; a want both of common propriety, and
I might say, of natural feeling ; yet, with all
her faults, I loved her, and ever should, be-
yond any other human being. I had drank
in the poison of her sweetness too long ever
to be cured of it ; and though I might find
it to be poison in the end, it was still in my
veins. My only ambition was to be per-
mitted to live with her, and to die in her
arms. Be she what she would, treat me how
she would, I felt that my soul was wedded
to hers ; and were she a mere lost creature,
I would try to snatch her from perdition,
and marry her to-morrow if she would
have me. That was the question " Would
she have me, or would she not ? " He
said he could not tell ; but should not
attempt to put any constraint upon her in-
clinations, one way or other. I acquiesced,
and added, that " I had brought all this

I

142 TO J. S. K .

upon myself, by acting contrary to the

suggestions of my friend, Mr. , who had

desired me to take no notice whether she
came near me or kept away, whether she
smiled or frowned, was kind or contemp-
tuous all you have to do, is to wait patiently
for a month till you are your own man, as
you will be in all probability ; then make
her an offer of your hand, and if she re-
fuses, there's an end of the matter." Mr.
L. said, "Well, Sir, and I don't think you
can follow a better advice ! " I took this
as a sort of negative encouragement, and so
we parted.

TO THE SAME (in continuation).

MY DEAR FRIEND,

The next day I felt almost as sailors must
do after a violent storm overnight, that has
subsided towards daybreak. The morning
was a dull and stupid calm, and I found she
was unwell, in consequence of what had
happened. In the evening I grew more
uneasy, and determined on going into the
country for a week or two. I gathered up
the fragments of the locket of her hair, and
the little bronze statue, which were strewed
about the floor, kissed them, folded them up
in a sheet of paper, and sent them to her,
with these lines written in pencil on the out-
side "Pieces of a broken heart, to be kept in
remembrance of the unhappy. Farewell" No
notice was taken ; nor did I expect any.

1 44 TO J. S. K .

The following morning I requested Betsey
to pack up my box for me, as I should go
out of town the next day, and at the same
time wrote a note to her sister to say, I
should take it as a favour if she would
please to accept of the enclosed copies of
the Vicar of Wake field, The Man of Feeling,
and Nature and Art, in lieu of three volumes
of my own writings, which I had given her
on different occasions, in the course of our
acquaintance. I was piqued, in fact, that
she should have these to shew as proofs of
my weakness, and as if I thought the way
to win her was by plaguing her with my own
performances. She sent me word back that
the books I had sent were of no use to her,
and that I should have those I wished for
in the afternoon ; but that she could not
before, as she had lent them to her sister,

Mrs. M , I said, " Very well ; " but

observed (laughing) to Betsey, "It's a bad
rule to give and take ; so, if Sarah won't
have these books, you must ; they are very
pretty ones, I assure you." She curtsied
and tbok them, according to the family

TO J. S, K . 145

custom. In the afternoon, when I came
back to tea, I found the little girl on her
knees, busy in packing up my things, and a
large paper-parcel on the table, which I
could not at first tell what to make of. On
opening it, however, I soon found what it
was. It contained a number of volumes
which I had given her at different times
(among others, a little Prayer-Book, bound
in crimson velvet, with green silk linings ;
she kissed it twenty times when she received
it, and said it was the prettiest present in
the world, and that she would shew it to her
aunt, who would be proud of it) and all
these she had returned together. Her name
in the title-page was cut out of them all. I
doubted at the instant whether she had done
this before or after I had sent for them back,
and I have doubted of it since ; but there is
no occasion to suppose her ugly all over with
hypocrisy. Poor little thing ! She has enough
to answer for, as it is. I asked Betsey if
she could carry a message for me, and she
said " Yes." " Will you tell your sister, then,
that I did not want all these books ; and
L

146 TO J. S. K .

give my love to her, and say that I shall be
obliged if she will still keep these that I
have sent back, and tell her that it is only
those of my own writing that I think un-
worthy of her." What do you think the
little imp made answer ? She raised herself
on the other side of the table where she
stood, as if inspired by the genius of the
place, and said "AND THOSE ARE THK ONES

THAT SHE PRIZES THE MOST ! " If there

were ever words spoken that could revive
the dead, those were the words. Let me
kiss them, and forget that my ears have
heard aught else ! I said, "Are you sure of
that?" and she said, "Yes, quite sure." I
told her, " If I could be, I should be very
different from what I was." And I became
so that instant, for these cas.ual words carried
assurance to my heart of her esteem that
once implied, I had proofs enough of her
fondness. Oh ! how I felt at that moment !
Restored to love, hope, and joy, by a breath
which I had caught by the merest accident,
and which I might have pined in absence
and mute despair for want of hearing! I

TO J. S. K . 147

did not know how to contain myself; I was
childish, wanton, drunk with pleasure. I
gave Betsey a twenty-shilling note which I
happened to have in my hand, and on her
asking " What's this for, Sir ? " I said, " It's
for you. Don't you think it worth that to
be made happy ? You once made me very
wretched by some words I heard you drop,
and now you have made me as happy ; and
all I wish you is, when you grow up, that
you may find some one to love you as well
as I do your sister, and that you may love
better than she does me !" I continued in
this state of delirium or dotage all that day
and the next, talked incessantly, laughed at
every thing, and was so extravagant, nobody
could tell what was the matter with me. I
murmured her name ; I blest her ; I folded
her to my heart in delicious fondness ; I
called her by my own name ; I worshipped

her ; I was mad for her. I told P I

should laugh in her face, if ever she pre-
tended not to like me again. Her mother
came in and said, she hoped I should excuse
Sarah's coming up. " Oh ! Ma'am," I said,

148 TO J. S. K .

" I have no wish to see her ; I feel her at
my heart ; she does not hate me after all,
and I wish for nothing. Let her come when
she will, she is to me welcomer than light,
than life ; but let it be in her own sweet
time, and at her own dear pleasure." Betsey
also told me she was "so glad to get the
books back." I, however, sobered and
wavered (by degrees) from seeing nothing
of her, day after day; and in less than a
week I was devoted to the Infernal Gods. I
could hold out no longer than the Monday
evening following. I sent a message to her;
she sent an ambiguous answer ; but she
came up. Pity me, my friend, for the shame
of this recital. Pity me for the pain of
having ever had to make it ! If the spirits of
mortal creatures, purified by faith and hope,
can (according to the highest assurances)
ever, during thousands of years of smooth-
rolling eternity and balmy, sainted repose,
forget the pain, the toil, the anguish, the
helplessness, and the despair they have
suffered here, in this frail being, then may I
forget that withering hour, and her, that fair,

TO J. S. K . 149

pale form that entered, my inhuman betrayer,
and my only earthly love ! She said, " Did
you wish to speak to me, Sir?" I said "Yes,
may I not speak to you ? I wanted to see
you and be friends." I rose up, offered her
an arm-chair which stood facing, bowed on
it, and knelt to her adoring. She said
(going) "If that's all, I have nothing to say."
I replied, " Why do you treat me thus ?
What have I done to become thus hateful to
you ?" Answer, " I always told you I had
no affection for you." You may suppose
this was a blow, after the imaginary honey-
moon in which I had passed the preceding
week. I was stunned by it ; my heart sunk
within me. I contrived to say, " Nay, my
dear girl, not always neither; for did you
not once (if I might presume to look back
to those happy, happy times) when you were
sitting on my knee as usual, embracing and
embraced, and I asked if you could not love
me at last, did you not make answer, in the
softest tones that ever man heard, ' / could
easily say so, whether I did or not : you should
judge by my actions ! ' Was I to blame in

150 TO J. S. K .

taking you at your word, when every hope I
had depended on your sincerity ? And did
you not say since I came back, l Your feel-
ings to me were the same as ever ? ' Why then
is your behaviour so different?" S. "Is it
nothing, your exposing me to the whole
house in the way you did the other evening ?"
H. " Nay, that was the consequence of your
cruel reception of me, not the cause of it.
I had better have gone away last year, as I
proposed to do, unless you would give some
pledge of your fidelity ; but it was your own
offer that I should remain. ' Why should I
go ?' you said, * Why could we not go on the
same as we had done, and say nothing about
the word forever?' S. "And how did you
behave when you returned ?" H. " That
was all forgiven when we -last parted, and
your last words were, * I should find you the
same as ever ' when I came back ? Did you
not that very day enchant and madden me
over again by the purest kisses and embraces,
and did I not go from you (as I said) ador-
ing, confiding, with every assurance of
mutual esteem and friendship ? " S. " Yes,

TO J. S. K . 151

and in your absence I found that you had
told my aunt what had passed between us."
H. " It was to induce her to extort your
real sentiments from you, that you might no
longer make a secret of your true regard for
me, which your actions (but not your words)
confessed." S. " I own I have been guilty
of improprieties, which you have gone and
repeated, not only in the house, but out of
it ; so that it has come to my ears from
various quarters, as if I was a light charac-
ter. And I am determined in future to be
guided by the advice of my relations, and
particularly of my aunt, whom I consider as
my best friend, and keep every lodger at a
proper distance." You will find hereafter
that her favourite lodger, whom she visits
daily, had left the house ; so that she might
easily make and keep this vow of extraordin-
ary self-denial. Precious little dissembler !
Yet her aunt, her best friend, says, " No,
Sir, no ; Sarah's no hypocrite !" which I was
fool enough to believe ; and yet my great
and unpardonable offence is to have enter-
tained passing doubts on this delicate point.

152 TO J. S. K .

I said, Whatever errors I had committed,
arose from my anxiety to have every thing
explained to her honour ; my conduct shewed
that I had that at heart, and that I built on
the purity of her character as on a rock.
My esteem for her amounted to adoration.
" She did not want adoration." It was only
when any thing happened to imply that I
had been mistaken, that I committed any
extravagance, because I could not bear to
think her short of perfection. " She was far
from perfection," she replied, with an air
and manner (oh, my God !) as near it as
possible. " How could she accuse me of a
want of regard to her? It was but the
other day, Sarah," I said to her, " when that
little circumstance of the books happened,
and I fancied the expressions your sister
dropped proved the sincerity of all your
kindness to me you don't know how my
heart melted within me at the thought, that
after all, I might be dear to you. New hopes
sprung up in my heart, and I felt as Adam
must have done when his Eve was created
for him !" " She had heard enough of that

TO J. S. K . 153

sort of conversation," (moving towards the
door). This, I own, was the unkindest cut
of all. I had, in that case, no hopes what-
ever. I felt that I had expended words in
vain, and that the conversation below stairs
which I told you of when I saw you) had
spoiled her taste for mine. If the allusion
had been classical I should have been to
blame ; but it was scriptural, it was a sort of
religious courtship, and Miss L. is religious !

At once he took his Muse and dipt her
Right in the middle of the Scripture.

It would not do the lady could make
neither head nor tail of it. This is a poor
attempt at levity. Alas ! I am sad enough.
" Would she go and leave me so ? If it was
only my own behaviour, I still did not doubt
of success. I knew the sincerity of my love,
and she would be convinced of it in time.
If that was all, I did not care : but tell me
true, is there not a new attachment that is
the real cause of your estrangement ? Tell
me, my sweet friend, and before you tell me,
give me your hand (nay, both hands) that I

iS4 T0 J- s. K .

may have something to support me under
the dreadful conviction/' She let me take
her hands in mine, saying, " She supposed
there could be no objection to that," as if
she acted on the suggestions of others,
instead of following her own will but still
avoided giving me any answer. I conjured
her to tell me the worst, and kill me on the
spot. Any thing was better than my present

state. I said, "Is it Mr. C ?" She

smiled, and said with gay indifference, " Mr.

C was here a very short time." "Well,

then, was it Mr. ?" She hesitated, and

then replied faintly, " No." This was a
mere trick to mislead ; one of the profound-
nesses of Satan, in which she is an adept.
" But," she added hastily, " she could make
no more confidences." "Then," said I,
" you have something to communicate."
" No ; but she had once mentioned a thing
of the sort, which I had hinted to her mother,
though it signified little." All this while I
was in tortures. Every word, every half-
denial, stabbed me. " Had she any tie ?"
" No, I have no tie ?" " You are not

TO J. S. K . 155

going to be married soon ?" " I don't
intend ever to marry at all !" " Can't
you be friends with me as of old ?"
"She could give no promises." " Would
she make her own terms ?" " She would
make none." " I was sadly afraid the little
image was dethroned from her heart, as I
had dashed it to the ground the other night."
" She was neither desperate nor violent."
I did not answer "But deliberate and
deadly," though I might ; and so she
vanished in this running fight of question
and answer, in spite of my vain efforts to
detain her. The cockatrice, I said, mocks
me : so she has always done. The thought
was a dagger to me. My head reeled, my
heart recoiled within me. I was stung with
scorpions ; my flesh crawled ; I was choked
with rage ; her scorn scorched me like flames ;
her air (her heavenly air) withdrawn from
me, stifled me, and left me gasping for breath
and being. It was a fable. She started up
in her own likeness, a serpent in place of a
woman. She had fascinated, she had stung
me, and had returned to her proper shape,

156 TO J. S. K .

gliding from me after inflicting the mortal
wound, and instilling deadly poison into every
pore ; but her form lost none of its original
brightness by the change of character, but
was all glittering, beauteous, voluptuous
grace. Seed of the serpent or of the woman,
she was divine ! I felt that she was a witch,
and had bewitched me. Fate had enclosed
me round about. / was transformed too,
no longer human (any more than she, to
whom I had knit myself) my feelings were
marble ; my blood was of molten lead ;
my thoughts on fire. I was taken out
of myself, wrapt into another sphere, far
from the light of day, of hope, of love. I
had no natural affection left ; she had slain
me, but no other thing had power over me-
Her arms embraced another ; but her mock-
embrace, the phantom of her love, still
bound me, and I had not a wish to escape.
So I felt then, and so perhaps shall feel till I
grow old and die, nor have any desire that
my years should last longer than they are
linked in the chain of those amorous folds,
or than her enchantments steep my soul in

TO J. S. K . 157

oblivion of all other things ! I started to
find myself alone for ever alone, without a
creature to love me. I looked round the
room for help ; I saw the tables, the chairs,
the places where she stood or sat, empty,
deserted, dead. I could not stay where I
was ; I had no one to go to but to the
parent-mischief, the preternatural hag, that
had " drugged this posset " of her daughter's
charms and falsehood for me, and I went
down and (such was my weakness and
helplessness) sat with her for an hour, and
talked with her of her daughter, and the
sweet days we had passed together, and said
I thought her a good girl, and believed that
if there was no rival, she still had a regard
for me at the bottom of her heart ; and how
I liked her all the better for her coy, maiden
airs : and I received the assurance over and
over that there was no one else ; and that
Sarah (they all knew) never staid five minutes
with any other lodger, while with me she
would stay by the hour together, in spite of
all her father could say to her (what were
her motives, was best known to herself !) and

158 TO J. S. K .

while we were talking of her, she came
bounding into the room, smiling with smoth-
ered delight at the consummation of my
folly and her own art; and I asked her
mother whether she thought she looked as if
she hated me, and I took her wrinkled,
withered, cadaverous, clammy hand at parting,
and kissed it. Faugh !

I will make an end of this story ; there is
something in it discordant to honest ears. I
left the house the next day, and returned to
Scotland in a state so near to phrenzy, that
I take it the shades sometimes ran into one

another. R met me the day after I

arrived, and will tell you the way I was in.
I was like a person in a high fever ; only
mine was in the mind instead of the body.
It had the same irritating uncomfortable
effect on the bye-standers. I was incapable
of any application, and don't know what I
should have done, had it not been for the

kindness of . I came to see you, to

" bestow some of my tediousness upon you,"
but you were gone from home. Every
thing went on well as to the law-business ;

TO J. S. K . 159

and as it approached to a conclusion, I wrote

to my good friend P to go to M ,

who had married her sister, and ask him if
it would be worth my while to make her a
formal offer, as soon as I was free, as, with
the least encouragement, I was ready to
throw myself at her feet ; and to know, in
case of refusal, whether I might go back
there and be treated as an old friend. Not
a word of answer could be got from her on
either point, notwithstanding every impor-
tunity and intreaty ; but it was the opinion

of M that I might go and try my fortune.

I did so with joy, with something like
confidence. I thought her giving no positive
answer implied a chance, at least, of the
reversion of her favour, in case I behaved
well. All was false, hollow, insidious. The
first night after I got home, I slept on down.
In Scotland, the flint had been my pillow.
But now I slept under the same roof with
her. What softness, what balmy repose in
the very thought ! I saw her that same day
and shook hands with her, and told her how
glad I was to see her ; and she was kind

l6o TO J. S. K .

and comfortable, though still cold and
distant. Her manner was altered from what
it was the last time. She still absented herself
from the room, but was mild and affable
when she did come. She was pale, dejected,
evidently uneasy about something, and had
been ill. I thought it was perhaps her
reluctance to yield to my wishes, her pity for
what I suffered ; and that in the struggle
between both, she did not know what to do.
How I worshipped her at these moments !
We had a long interview the third day, and
I thought all was doing well. I found her
sitting at work in the window-seat of the
front parlour ; and on my asking if I might
come in, she made no objection. I sat
down by her ; she let me take her hand ; I
talked to her of indifferent things, and of
old times. I asked her if she would put
some new frills on my shirts ? " With
the greatest pleasure." If she could get
the littk image mended ? "It was broken
in three pieces, and the sword was gone, but
she would try." I then asked her to make up
a plaid silk which I had given her in the

TO J. S. K . l6l

winter, and which she said would make a
pretty summer gown. I so longed to see
her in it ! " She had little time to spare,
but perhaps might ! " Think what I felt,
talking peaceably, kindly, tenderly with my
love, not passionately, not violently. I
tried to take pattern by her patient meekness,
as I thought it, and to subdue my desires to
her will. I then sued to her, but respectfully,
to be admitted to her friendship she must
know I was as true a friend as ever woman
had or if there was a bar to our intimacy
from a dearer attachment, to let me know it
frankly, as I shewed her all my heart. She
drew out her handkerchief and wiped her
eyes " of tears which sacred pity had
engendered there." Was it so or not ? I
cannot tell. But so she stood (while I
pleaded my cause to her with all the earnest-
ness and fondness in the world) with the
tears trickling from her eye-lashes, her head
stooping, her attitude fixed, with the finest
expression that ever was seen of mixed
regret, pity, and stubborn resolution ; but
without speaking a word, without altering
M

1 62 TO J. S. K .

a feature. It was like a petrifaction of a
human face in the softest moment of passion.
"Ah!" I said, "how you look! I have
prayed again and again while I was away
from you, in the agony of my spirit, that I
might but live to see you look so again, and
then breathe my last !" I entreated her to
give me some explanation. In vain ! At
length she said she must go, and disappeared
like a spirit. That week she did all the
little trifling favours I had asked of her.
The frills were put on, and she sent up to
know if I wanted any more done. She got
the Buonaparte mended. This was like
healing old wounds indeed ! How ? As
follows, for thereby hangs the conclusion of
my tale. Listen.

I had sent a message one 'evening to speak
to her about some special affairs of the house,
and received no answer. I waited an hour
expecting her, and then went out in great
vexation at my disappointment. I complained
to her mother a day or two after, saying I
thought it so unlike Sarah's usual propriety
of behaviour, that she must mean it as a mark

TO J. S. K . 163

of disrespect. Mrs. L said, " La ! Sir,

you're always fancying things. Why, she
was dressing to go out, and she was only
going to get the little image you're both
so fond of mended ; and its to be done
this evening. She has been to two or
three places to see about it, before she could
get any one to undertake it." My heart, my
poor fond heart, almost melted within me at
this news. I answered, " Ah ! Madam,
that's always the way with the dear creature.
I am finding fault with her and thinking the
hardest things of her ; and at that very time
she's doing something to shew the most
delicate attention, and that she has no greater
satisfaction than in gratifying my wishes !"
On this we had some farther talk, and I took
nearly the whole of the lodgings at a hundred
guineas a year, that (as I said) she might
have a little leisure to sit at her needle of an
evening, or to read if she chose, or to walk
out when it was fine. She was not in good
health, and it would do her good to be less
confined. I would be the drudge and she
should no longer be the slave. I asked

164 TO J. S. K .

nothing in return. To see her happy, to
make her so, was to be so myself. This was
agreed to. I went over to Blackheath that
evening, delighted as I could be after all I had
suffered, and lay the whole of the next
morning on the heath under the open sky,
dreaming of my earthly Goddess. This was
Sunday. That evening I returned, for I
could hardly bear to be for a moment out of
the house where she was, and the next
morning she tapped at the door it was
opened it was she she hesitated and then
came forward : she had got the little image
in her hand, I took it, and blest her from my
heart. She said " They had been obliged to
put some new pieces to it." I said "I didn't
care how it was done, so that I had it restored
to me safe, and by her." I thanked her and
begged to shake hands with her. She did so,
and as I held the only hand in the world that
I never wished to let go, I looked up in her
face, and said " Have pity on me, have pity
on me, and save me if you can !" Not a
word of answer, but she looked full in my
eyes, as much as to say, " Well, I'll think

TO J. S. K . 165

of it ; and if I can, I will save you !" We
talked about the expense of repairing the
figure. "Was the man waiting?" " No,
she had fetched it on Saturday evening."
I said I'd give her the money in the course
of the day, and then shook hands with her
again in token of reconciliation ; and she
went waving out of the room, but at the door
turned round and looked full at me, as she
did the first time she beguiled me of my
heart. This was the last.

All that day I longed to go down stairs to
ask her and her mother to set out with me
for Scotland on Wednesday, and on Saturday
I would make her my wife. Something
withheld me. In the evening, however, I
could not rest without seeing her, and I said
to her younger sister, " Betsey, if Sarah will
come up now, I'll pay her what she laid out
for me the other day." " My sister's gone
out, Sir," was the answer. What again !
thought I, That's somewhat sudden. I told

P her sitting in the window-seat of the

front parlour boded me no good. It was not
in her old character. She did not use to

166 "TO j. s. K .

know there were doors or windows in the
house and now she goes out three times in
a week. It is to meet some one, I'll lay my
life on't. "Where is she gone ? " "To my
grandmother's, Sir." "Where does your
grandmother live now ? " " At Somers'
Town." I immediately set out to Somers'
Town. I passed one or two streets, and at
last turned up King-street, thinking it most
likely she would return that way home. I
passed a house in King-street where I had
once . lived, and had not proceeded many
paces, ruminating on chance and change and
old times, when I saw her coming towards
me. I felt a strange pang at the sight, but
I thought her alone. Some people before
me moved on, and I saw another person with
her. The murder was out.' It was a tall,
rather well-looking young man, but I did not
at first recollect him. We passed at the
crossing of the street without speaking.
Will you believe it, after all that had passed
between us for two years, after what had
passed in the last half-year, after what
had passed that very morning, she went

TO J S. K . 167

by me without even changing countenance,
without expressing the slightest emotion,
without betraying either shame or pity or
remorse or any other feeling that any
other human being but herself must have
shewn in the same situation. She had
no time to prepare for acting a part, to
suppress her feelings the truth is, she has
not one natural feeling in her bosom to
suppress. I turned and looked they also
turned and looked and as if by mutual
consent, we both retrod our steps and passed
again, in the same way. I went home. I
was stifled. I could not stay in the house,
walked into the street, and met them coming
towards home. As soon as he had left her
at the door (I fancy she had prevailed with
him to accompany her, dreading some
violence) I returned, went upstairs, and
requested an interview. Tell her, I said, I'm
in excellent temper and good spirits, but I
must see her! She came smiling, and I said,
" Come in, my dear girl, and sit down, and
tell me all about it, how it is and who it
is." " What," she said, " do you mean Mr.

1 68 TO J. S. K-

C ? Oh," said I, " then it is he ! Ah !

you rogue, I always suspected there was
something between you, but you know you
denied it lustily : why did you not tell me all
about it at the time, instead of letting me
suffer as I have done ? But however, no
reproaches. I only wish it may all end
happily and honourably for you, and I am
satisfied. But," I said, " you know you used
to tell me, you despised looks." "She didn't
think Mr. C was so particularly hand-
some." " No, but he's very well to pass, and
a well-grown youth into the bargain."
Pshaw ! let me put an end to the fulsome
detail. I found he had lived over the way,
that he had been lured thence, no doubt,
almost a year before, that they had first
spoken in the street, and that he had never
once hinted at marriage, and had gone
away, because (as he said) they were too
much together, and that it was better for
her to meet him occasionally out of doors.
" There could be no harm in their walking
together." " No, but you may go some
where afterwards." " One must trust to

TO J. S. K . 169

one's principle for that." Consummate
hypocrite ! * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

******** I told her Mr. M ,

who had married her sister, did not wish to
leave the house. I, who would have married
her, did not wish to leave it. I told her I
hoped I should not live to see her come to
shame, after all my love of her ; but put her
on her guard as well as I could, and said,
after the lengths she had permitted herself
with me, I could not help being alarmed at
the influence of one over her, whom she
could hardly herself suppose to have a tenth
part of my esteem for her ! ! She made no
answer to this, but thanked me coldly for
my good advice, and rose to go. I begged
her to sit a few minutes, that I might try to
recollect if there was any thing else I
wished to say to her, perhaps for the last
time ; and then, not finding any thing, I
bade her good night, and asked for a fare-
wel kiss. Do you know she refused ; so
little does she understand what is due to
friendship, or love, or honour ! We parted
friends, however, and I felt deep grief, but

170 TO J. S. K .

no enmity against her. I thought C

had pressed his suit after I went, and had
prevailed. There was no harm in that a
little fickleness or so, a little over-pretension
to unalterable attachment but that was all.
She liked him better than me it was my
hard hap, but I must bear it. I went out to
roam the desart streets, when, turning a
corner, whom should I meet but her very
lover ? I went up to him and asked for a
few minutes' conversation on a subject that
was highly interesting to me and I believed
not indifferent to him : and in the course
of four hours' talk, it came out that for
three months previous to my quitting
London for Scotland, she had been playing
the same game with him as with me that
he breakfasted first, and enjoyed an hour of
her society, and then I took my turn, so
that we never jostled ; and this explained
why, when he came back sometimes and
passed my door, as she was sitting in my
lap, she coloured violently, thinking, if her
lover looked in, what a denouement there
would be. He could not help again and

TO J. S. K . iyi

again expressing his astonishment at finding
that our intimacy had continued unimpaired
up to so Late a period after he came, and
when they were on the most intimate foot-
ing. She used to deny positively to him
that there was any thing between us, just as
she used to assure me with impenetrable

effrontery that " Mr. C was nothing to

her, but merely a lodger." All this while
she kept up the- farce of her romantic
attachment to her old lover, vowed that she
never could alter in that respect, let me go
to Scotland on the solemn and repeated
assurance that there was no new flame, that
there was no bar between us but this
shadowy love I leave her on this under-
standing, she becomes more fond or more
intimate with her new lover ; he quitting
the house (whether tired out or not, I can't
say) in revenge she ceases to write to me,
keeps me in wretched suspense, treats me
like something loathsome to her when I
return to enquire the cause, denies it with
scorn and impudence, destroys me and
shews no pity, no desire to soothe or shorten

172 TO J. S. K .

the pangs she has occasioned by her
wantonness and hypocrisy, and wishes to
linger the affair on to the last moment,
going out to keep an appointment with
another while she pretends to be obliging

me in the tenderest point (which C

himself said was too much) What do

you think of all this ? Shall I tell you my
opinion ? But 1 must try to do it in another
letter.

TO THE SAME (in Conclusion).

I did not sleep a wink all that night ; nor
did I know till the next day the full meaning
of what had happened to me. With the
morning's light, conviction glared in upon
me that I had not only lost her for ever
but every feeling I had ever had towards
her respect, tenderness, pity all but my
fatal passion, was gone. The whole was a
mockery, a frightful illusion. I had em-
braced the false Florimel instead of the true ;
or was like the man in the Arabian Nights
who had married agouL How different was
the idea I once had of her ! Was this she,

" Who had been beguiled she who was made
Witnin a gentle bosom to be laid-
To bless and to be blessed to be heart-bare
To one who found his bettered likeness there

174 TO j. s. K .

To think for ever*with him, like a bride

To haunt his eye, like taste personified

To double his delight, to share his sorrow,

And like a morning beam, wake to him every morrow?"

I saw her pale, cold form glide silent by
me, dead to shame as to pity. Still I seemed
to clasp this piece of witchcraft to my bosom ;
this lifeless image, which was all that was
left of my love, was the only thing to which
my sad heart clung. Were she dead, should
I not wish to gaze once more upon her pallid
features ? She is dead to me ; but what she
once was to me, can never die ! The agony,
the conflict of hope and fear, of adoration
and jealousy is over ; or it would, ere long,
have ended with my life. I am no more
lifted now to Heaven, and then plunged in
the abyss ; but I seem to have been thrown
from the top of a precipice, and to lie
groveling, stunned, and stupefied. I am
melancholy, lonesome, and weaker than a
child. The worst is, I have no prospect of
any alteration for the better : she has cut off
all possibility of a reconcilement at any

TO J. S. K . 175

future period. Were she even to return to
her former pretended fondness and endear-
ments, I could have no pleasure, no confi-
dence in them. I can scarce make out the
contradiction to myself. I strive to think
she always was what I now know she is ; but
I have great difficulty in it, and can hardly
believe but she still is what she so long
seemed, Poor thing ! I am afraid she is
little better off herself ; nor do I see what
is to become of her, unless she throws off
the mask at once, and runs a-muck at infamy.
She is exposed and laid bare to all those
whose opinion she set a value upon. Yet
she held her head very high, and must feel
(if she feels any thing) proportionably morti-
fied. A more complete experiment on
character was never made. If I had not
met her lover immediately after I parted
with her, it would have been nothing. I
might have supposed she had changed her
mind in my absence, and had given him the
preference as soon as she felt it, and even
shewn her delicacy in declining any farther
intimacy with me. But it comes out that

176 TO J. S. K .

she had gone on in the most forward and
familiar way with both at once (she could
not change her mind in passing from one
room to another) tola both the same bare-
faced and unblushing falsehoods, like the
commonest creature ; received presents from
me to the very last, and wished to keep up
the game still longer, either to gratify her
humour, her avarice, or her vanity in playing
with my passion, or to have me as a dernier
resort, in case of accidents. Again, it would
have been nothing, if she had not come up
with her demure, well-composed, wheedling
looks that morning, and then met me in the
evening in a situation, which (she believed)
might kill me on the spot, with no more
feeling than a common courtesan shews,
who bilks a customer, and passes him, leer-
ing up at her bully, the moment after. If
there had been the frailty of passion, it
would have been excusable ; but it is evident
she is a practised, callous jilt, a regular
lodging-house decoy, played off by her
mother upon the lodgers, one after another,
applying them to her different purposes,

TO J. S. K : . 177

laughing at them in turns, and herself the
probable dupe and victim of some favourite
gallant in the end. I know all this ; but
what do I gain by it, unless I could find
some one with her shape and air, to supply
the place of the lovely apparition ? That
a professed wanton should come and sit on
a man's knee, and put her arms round his
neck, and caress him, and seem fond of
him, means nothing, proves nothing, no one
concludes any thing from it ; but that a
pretty, reserved, modest, delicate-looking
girl should do this, from the first hour to
the last of your being in the house, without
intending any thing by it, is new, and, I
think, worth explaining. It was, I confess,
out of my calculation, and may be out of
that of others. Her unmoved indifference
and self-possession all the while, shew that
it is her constant practice. Her look even,
if closely examined, bears this interpretation.
It is that of studied hypocrisy or startled
guilt, rather than of refined sensibility or
conscious innocence. " She defied any one
to read her thoughts ? " she once told me.

N

178 TO J. S. K .

"Do they then require concealing?" I
imprudently asked her. The command over
herself is surprising. She never once betrays
herself by any momentary forgetfulness, by
any appearance of triumph or superiority to
the person who is her dupe, by any levity of
manner in the plenitude of her success ;
it is one faultless, undeviating, consistent,
consummate piece of acting. Were she a
saint on earth, she could not seem more like
one. Her hypocritical high-flown preten-
sions, indeed, make her the worse : but still
the ascendancy of her will, her determined
perseverance in what she undertakes to do,
has something admirable in it, approaching
to the heroic. She is certainly an extra-
ordinary girl ! Her retired manner, and
invariable propriety of behaviour made me
think it next to impossible she could grant
the same favours indiscriminately to every
one that she did to me. Yet this now appears
to be the fact. She must have done the

very same with C , invited him into

the house to carry on a closer intrigue
with her, and then commenced the double

TO J, S. K . 179

game with both together. She always " de-
spised looks." This was a favourite phrase
with her, and one of the hooks which she
baited for me. Nothing could win her but
a man's behaviour and sentiments. Besides,
she could never like another she was a
martyr to disappointed affection and friend-
ship was all she could even extend to any
other man. All the time, she was making
signals, playing off her pretty person, and
having occasional interviews in the street
with this very man, whom she could only
have taken so sudden and violent a liking to
from his looks, his personal appearance,
and what she probably conjectured of his
circumstances. Her sister had married a

counsellor the Miss F 's, who kept the

house before, had done so too and so would
she. "There was precedent for it." Yet
if she was so desperately enamoured of this
new acquaintance, if he had displaced the
little image from her breast, if he was become
her second " unalterable attachment " (which
I would have given my life, to have been)
why continue the same unwarrantable

l8o TO J. S. K .

familiarities with me to the last, and
promise that they should be renewed on my
return (if I had not unfortunately stumbled
upon the truth to her aunt) and yet keep
up the same refined cant about her old
attachment all the time, as if it was that which
stood in the way of my pretensions, and not
her faithlessness to it ? " If one swerves
from one, one shall swerve from another "
was her excuse for not returning my regard.
Yet that which I thought a prophecy, was
I suspect a history. She had swerved twice
from her vowed engagements, first to me,
and then from me to another. If she made
a fool of me, what did she make of her lover ?
I fancy he has put that question to himself.
I said nothing to him about the amount of
the presents ; which is another damning
circumstance, that might have opened my
eyes long before ; but they were shut by
my fond affection, which "turned all to
favour and to prettiness." She cannot be
supposed to have kept up an appearance
of old regard to me, from a fear of hurting
my feelings by her desertion ; for she not

TO J. S. K . l8l

only shewed herself indifferent to, but
evidently triumphed in my sufferings, and
heaped every kind of insult and indignity
upon them. I must have incurred her
contempt and resentment by my mistaken
delicacy at different times ; and her manner,
when I have hinted at becoming a reformed
man in this respect, convinces me of it.
" She hated it ! " She always hated whatever

she liked most. She "hated Mr. C 's

red slippers," when he first came ! One
more count finishes the indictment. She
not only discovered the most hardened
indifference to the feelings of others ; she
has not shewn the least regard to her own
character, or shame when she was detected.
When found out, she seemed to say, " Well,
what if I am ? I have played the game as
long as I could ; and if I could keep it up no
longer, it was not for want of good will ! "
Her colouring once or twice is the only sign
of grace she has exhibited. Such is the
creature on whom I had thrown away my
heart and soul one who was incapable of
feelinsr the commonest emotions of human

1 82 TO J. S. K .

nature, as they regarded herself or any one
else. " She had no feelings with respect to
herself," she often said. She in fact knows
what she is, and recoils from the good
opinion or sympathy of others, which she
feels to be founded on a deception ; so that
my overweening opinion of her must have
appeared like irony, or direct insult. My
seeing her in the street has gone a good way
to satisfy me. Her manner there explains
her manner in-doors to be conscious and
overdone ; and besides, she looks but
indifferently. She is diminutive in stature,
and her measured step and timid air do not
suit these public airings. I am afraid she
will soon grow common to my imagination,
as well as worthless in herself. Her image
seems fast " going into the wastes of time,"
like a weed that the wave bears farther and
farther from me. Alas ! thou poor hapless
weed, when I entirely lose sight of thee, and
forever, no flower will ever bloom on earth
to glad my heart again !

THE END.

ERRATUM.

For Patmore's " My Friends and Acquaintances "
read " My Friends and Acquaintance."

1 82 TO J. S. K .

nature, as they regarded herself or any one
else. " She had no feelings with respect to
herself," she often said. She in fact knows
what she is, and recoils from the good
opinion or sympathy of others, which she
feels to be founded on a deception ; so that

seems last * gumg mtu LUC waoica ui tune,
like a weed that the wave bears farther and
farther from me. Alas ! thou poor hapless
weed, when I entirely lose sight of thee, and
forever, no flower will ever bloom on earth
to glad my heart again !

THE END.

RUGBY :

PRINTED BY GEORGE E. OVER,
THE RUGBY PRESS.

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